For DJ, presenter and producer Colleen Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy Murphy, sharing her love for high- quality sound and music discovery isn’t only a calling, it’s a spiritual imperative. W hether she’s running deep disco cuts inside a sweaty sound- system tent at Gilles Peterson’s We Out Here festival, hosting listening sessions of classic albums at Royal Albert a U.K. incarnation of the seminal New York party, helping spur a boom in audiophile dance sessions around England. BY ANDY THOMAS
Launched in 2010 as a response to what Colleen saw as the devaluation of music into aural wallpaper, her Classic Album Sundays series has been similarly prescient, bringing creators and audiences together in sonic and contextual appreciation of well- known records ranging from Supertramp’s Crime of the Century to Soul II Soul’s Club Classics Vol. One . As important as sound was at the Loft, it would have meant little without Mancuso’s deep attention to musical sequencing. As a leading audiophile DJ spinning across the world, Colleen takes a similar approach. Pushing against genre boundaries, she revels in finding connections and sharing discoveries, as heard on her weekly radio show Balearic Breakfast , and in her festival sets as Love Dancin’ Sound System with husband Adam Dewhurst (aka Daddy Ad of Trojan Sound System). Colleen’s open-minded outlook on music is equally evident in her work as a producer under the moniker Cosmodelica, through which she’s remixed the likes of Horace Andy, Róisín Murphy, A Certain Ratio and, recently, the Cure. Driving everything she does is a spiritual connection to sound, and a belief in the power that coming together as a community holds in these troubled times. With the fourth volume of her Balearic Breakfast compilation series out now on Heavenly Recordings, and a raft of fresh Cosmodelica remixes on the way, Colleen recently spoke about her life in music and where it might take her next.
Hall, or celebrating the turntable in a BBC Radio documentary series, Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy is someone who encourages people to experience and think about music on a deeper level. More than just a DJ, producer, and presenter, she’s become a pillar in the renaissance of vinyl and hi-fi audio, an advocate for analog delights committed to upholding her late mentor David Mancuso’s maxim:“Good sound is a human right.” Raised in the suburbs outside Boston, Colleen found her calling in NewYork, where she relocated in 1986 to attend NYU. While hosting a laundry list of shows at the school’s influential radio station WNYU-FM (89.1) and serving as its first woman program director, she was swept up by the city’s underground club culture. After meeting and befriending David Mancuso in the early 1990s, she joined an exclusive group of musical “hosts” invited to hold court at Mancuso’s legendary Loft, spinning sets at the disco institution that she’d soon help introduce to a new generation of music obsessives. A move to London in the late ’90s saw her join another underground dance community as disco in the U.K. began to be reappraised through labels like Nuphonic Records, for which she instigated and co-produced 1999’s David Mancuso Presents the Loft compilation and its 2000 sequel.With the late Mancuso’s blessing and guidance, Colleen subsequently co-founded the London Loft,
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( opposite ) DJ Cosmo in the mix at WNYU in 1995. All photos courtesy of Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy.
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