I heard the sad news last week about the death of Ron Murphy and have to say that as the week has gone on it has stayed with me and filled me with a degree of sadness. I never knew the man – he lived the other side of the world – but I’m familiar with his work. In fact I am a lot more familiar with his work than I had realised.
I’ve known the name for a long time but not really paid it much attention. His job was cutting records – actually cutting the groove into the lacquer that would be used to manufacture records. My first contact with his work was an Advent album ‘Elements Of Life’, my first record with grooves cut that went in a different direction to usual. Just to explain, some of the tracks run from the middle out and on one side one track starts from the outside, one from the centre and both meet somewhere in the middle.
During the week since his death I have read, watched and listened to a whole lot more about him and discovered what a truly interesting and talented man he was and how important his work was to the (mainly Detroit) techno scene. On inspecting the run-out grooves for his marks, I’ve discovered a number of my favourite records have all been cut by him. Listening to interviews and reading about him has also given an insight into the impact of his advice to fledgling producers in the scene. His death at the moment appears to be an irreplaceable loss to not just the Detroit music scene but also the rest of the world. He was a true artist who will be sadly missed.
Links to discover more:
http://www.filter27.com/archives/2008/01/rip-ron-murphy.php
http://infinitestatemachine.com/2008/01/13/ron-murphy-nsc-rip/
http://aaroncarl.blogspot.com/2008/01/rip-ron-murphy-man-legend.html
http://www.detroitdigitalvinyl.com/submergepodcast/podcastaudio/Show1_Part2_RonMurphy.mp3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDmBx4R-Gas
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=1376
http://www.soundenterprises.com/
http://www.icanproductions.com/ron_murphy_museum.mov
http://suenomartino.net/nsc.htm
A few favourites cut by Ron Murphy in the box next to me:
- Plastikman – Sheet One
- The Advent – Elements of life
- E-Dancer – World Of Deep
- The Martian - Particle Shower / The Voice Of Grandmother
- Omar S – 008
- UR – Codebreaker
& my entire Patrice Scott / Sistrum Recordings collection!
2 comments:
I shall follow those links with geeky fervour! Sounds like an interesting guy.
It seems funny to think of the old man there cutting techno records!!
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