ROISIN MURPHY

The former Moloko songstress – whose “dicking around in the studio” translated to a slew of international chart-topping hits – has music flowing through her DNA…

“I didn’t discover music,” insists Roisin Murphy. “It discovered me. It was there, waiting to jump on me. A part of my life for as long as I can remember.”

Murphy – formerly one half of Moloko, but successfully solo for the best part of 20 years now – grew up in Arklow, a smallish town just south of Dublin. It’s perhaps a cliché to imagine that every Irish house is full of music and song, but for the Murphy family, this seems to have been the case.

“Any reason for a drink and any reason for a song, that’s what the house was like. When I look back, it feels like the singing never stopped. It sort of blends in with the way we talked to each other. If we were sad or happy, music was communication.”

Her parents moved to Manchester when she was 12 – just as house music was beginning to take hold of the UK charts – but ended up moving back just three years later. Roisin, still only 15, decided to stay, living with schoolmates until she was old enough to sign on and get a place of her own.

There was plenty happening in Manchester – Murphy watched the Madchester scene unfold – but it was a move to Sheffield in 1993 that finally nudged her into a recording studio. One of the first people she met was Mark Brydon, former bass player with the industrial funk band, Chakk. Along with other Sheffield bands like the Human League, Heaven 17, Cabaret Voltaire etc, Chakk were pioneering the use of machine-driven dance music in the early80s. They had limited success, but it was enough to allow Brydon to build the impressive FON recording studio.