24 (DJ) Parrot Magic
Murphy’s camera-shy right-hand man for this album, DJ Parrot aka Crooked Man, reveals some of the pair’s studio secrets…
cm:Can you briefly talk us through a song on the album?
DJP: “Well, the track that started the project – and the LP – is Simulation. I took the bassline and the slightly ridiculous pea-soup hi-hat sound into the studio of my engineer and good friend, Fat Dave. Roisin refers to Dave as a Musical God, and it’s a good job he is because I’m tone deaf and can barely play a note. I can’t get my head around any kind of musical or rhythmic complexity, so rarely stray far from a straight 4/4 disco bum-crack beat.
“I have no rules about quantisation. Whatever sounds good on the track is OK as far as I’m concerned. Fat Dave was a rhythm guitarist in the 70s and early-80s disco cover acts, so he can be relied upon to get his old Strat sat in the groove. He also played the little electric piano part that’s a big driver of that song. The sound’s from Kontakt V5. Most Crooked Man productions are driven forward by the b-lines, so Simulation is a little unusual in that respect.”