James Murphy Opens Up About Working With Arcade Fire

James Murphy wasn’t sure what to expect when the Arcade Fire arrived to record with him at DFA Records’ New York studio in March. “There’s a lot of them, and they’re mostly self-produced – like, they don’t need a producer in a certain way,” Murphy tells Rolling Stone. “So I didn’t know how it would go.”

The Canadian rockers have released few details on the highly anticipated follow-up to their last LP, 2010’s The Suburbs, but the LCD Soundsystem mastermind and DFA co-founder said the quality of the songs he worked on took any pressure off of him as a producer, and allowed him to suggest different approaches or ways of fine-tuning the material.

Arcade Fire Recording at James Murphy’s New York Studio

“It’s always working,” he said. “It’s just that I might have a different way of approaching how to finish, or how to accomplish an end result that really works.”

Arcade Fire have performed a handful of new songs, and hope to have the album ready for release by the end of the year. “I think it’s going to be a really great record, actually,” Murphy says. “I’m eager to see it come out.”

Reporting by Dan Rys