The story of LCD Soundsystem’s iconic ‘Losing My Edge’: “It’s so unbelievably meta”

Trevor Jackson: “LCD Soundsystem wasn’t even mentioned. I knew that James and Tim
[Goldsworthy] were the producers. James might have mentioned he was doing his own
thing, but it didn’t cross my mind. And then he sent me, or Tim sent me, I don’t think
Jonathan Galkin was involved. Maybe he was, but I was just dealing with James and Tim.
They sent me ‘Losing My Edge’. I actually preferred the B-side at the time, ‘Beat Connection’. That was a track I played all the time. They told me ‘Losing My Edge’ was the next record.”

Nancy Whang: “I thought it [‘Losing My Edge’] was very funny and clever. It’s taking the
piss out of hipsters but also taking the piss out of this old guy who’s looking disdainfully on
these hipsters, only because he’s ageing out but also lauding these kids who are making
discoveries. It’s so unbelievably meta. It’s a weird song, especially at the time what with
everything else that was going on musically in New York. It was just a weird song.”

Phil Mossman: “I knew all his influences. They were all in there. It says it in the first
record, doesn’t it? The mission statement was in the first record. It was like: ‘I’m a lonely
ageing hipster and this is my last shot. No one’s going to stop me.’”

Erol Alkan: “I can tell you exactly where I first heard it. It was early 2002. This is the most ‘Losing My Edge’ way of hearing ‘Losing My Edge’ for the first time. I heard it in New York, being played off a white label in a bar called Passerby. I got invited to DJ in New York, I had two or three gigs, one of them was like a bar gig. You weren’t effectively allowed to dance in New York City at that point because of Guiliani’s law which prohibited dancing in places. I was playing this bar with DJ Unknown who was Fischerspooner’s DJ at the time. We were literally playing to 12 people. And he played this record. The first thing that got me was the beat. It resonated immediately. The vocals came in and I stood there really taking it all in and thinking what the hell is this record and how come I’ve never heard it before? It immediately befriended me. I felt like I’d kind of known this voice or… this… I don’t know how to pinpoint it, but it just felt incredibly familiar. And then by the time the first propulsive overdriven bass part came in, I went straight over to DJ Unknown and was like: ‘What the fuck is this?’”

Trevor Jackson: “Electroclash is fundamental. That’s part of the reason I started doing
Playgroup, because dance music was faceless and had become boring. For me anyway.
Everything that was going on before that was fucking boring. It was personality-less. It was
mainly just drug music and I never took drugs, so for me it was boring. And then
electroclash came along tapping into things that I grew up with in the early-80s, rekindling
Soft Cell and Human League – most of these people, Peaches and (DJ) Hell, they were kind of my age.”

Erol Alkan: “Unknown showed me the white label. There was nothing written on it. He
turns to me and says, or what I thought he said, was: ‘It’s LSD Soundsystem.’ I can’t
remember what he played next, but it was just dwarfed by it, because the charisma that
comes out of the speakers when that record’s on, the impact that it makes with you is a lot. Especially at a time when electroclash was in full swing and character was back in music. That record encapsulated that for me perfectly. It wasn’t trying to be electroclash. It wasn’t trying to be cool, even though the whole song is, in a way, slightly mocking of cool or the notion of cool… but completely understands what cool is. But then it also makes you realise that you can be cool without subscribing to all this stuff. It says a lot.”

Phil Mossman: “Everyone at the label (DFA) hated it. They were urging him not to release it. Tim hated the record and so did Jon Galkin, but James went ahead anyway. Tim probably had a few sour grapes… ‘Hey, we’re supposed to be partners, why are you suddenly doing this project entirely on your own, when we’ve been doing remixes together?’ At the beginning James couldn’t programme to save his life. He didn’t know what a sampler was. But Tim was amazing. He’d been in Mo’ Wax and UNKLE and all that. It was a skill back then, beat programming, anyone can do it on a laptop these days, but back then, a proper skill. Once James learned off Tim how to programme and realised he could do it himself, then Tim was out the studio for LCD.

“They had done The Rapture together. That was Tim doing the programming and James doing the desk and recording. That was a proper melting pot of James’ Sub Pop, Steve Albini roots mixing with Tim Goldsworthy’s Mo’ Wax, UNKLE roots. That’s what the excitement was. But then I think James quickly realised that this beat programming ain’t that difficult. I mean, fair play to him. He’s got vision, ability and he wasn’t taking any shit from anyone. It’s like: ‘I’m doing all of it. Fuck all of you.’”

Arthur Baker: “It was the beat first and then the lyrics. It was so tongue in cheek and very different. Who else had done anything like that? The same aesthetic as the Beastie Boys in a way. And I know he worked with them at some point. It was a real New York track. It defined New York at that time.”

Erol Alkan: “I left New York and came back to London beside myself with excitement. It
was like I’d discovered a new continent or something. ‘Oh my God, have you heard this LSD Soundsystem record?’ No-one had heard the white label. I went into Rough Trade every week, asking Nigel, Sean or Simon behind the counter: ‘Have you had this LSD Soundsystem in yet?” Then one day I walked in and before I even got to the counter, they held it up. ‘It’s LCD Soundsystem you’re looking for.’ And that’s how I discovered it.”

Paul Epworth: “There’s so many little things on that record. There’s a Killing Joke reference and that’s without the references to all his favourite bands, which in itself was a reference to Daft Punk. Immediately there’s two generations that connect with the history of that record and because at the time it felt so new, that stuff quickly appeased the old hipsters, the slightly less old hipsters and of course all the new hipsters.”

LCD Soundsystem: A Disco Pogo Tribute is out now – you can buy your copy here.

The new single ‘X-Ray Eyes’ late last year was thought to be the first taste of LCD’s next album, initially reported to be set for release at some point in 2025. Murphy later shared an update on the forthcoming record – the follow-up to 2017’s ‘American Dream’. “Don’t ask me when that is, because we are still working on it. But it feels very good to be putting out new music,” the frontman said.

The band hosted a residency at London’s O2 Academy Brixton this summer, and played a pair of joint-headline shows with Pulp at the Hollywood Bowl in September. They’ll kick off a New York residency at Queens’ Knockdown Center this Thursday (November 20), ahead of a string of dates in Aspen, Colorado.