Strictly ballroom

Taken from their majestic new album Statues, leader track 'Familiar Feeling' sees Roisin Murphy and co reverting to their classic dance-pop style (think 'Sing It Back' and 'The Time Is Now'), except this time with a gargantuan 50-piece orchestra in tow, which, I hasten to add, the band wrote and arranged for themselves. Impressive, eh?

The video for 'Familiar Feeling' itself was directed by Elaine Constantine, a renowned fashion photographer and long-time-best-mate of Roisin's, whose stills have appeared in The Face, Vogue and Arena. Roisin told us herself that the video was meant to be a celebration of the purity and transcendence of dancing - and thus it's set in a real northern soul club (which means all those people you see dancing are local regulars). And FAO The Girls At The Back - the cutie-pie Roisin is seen cavorting with in the video is none other than British actor Paddy Considine, who was most recently seen in the new short by scary satirist Chris Morris (My Wrongs, Brasseye).

To watch the video for 'Familiar Feeling', click on the links below: regular quality high quality

But that's not, as the man said, all. Last time Roisin was in Dublin - around the time of the release of Statues - hotpress.com filmed this wee chat. Click beneath to read about...

1. "It pulls out the bare bones... makes it more danceable... more pure": ...how the adding-by-taking-away philosophy of dub-remixed disco records was a huge touchstone for the band during Statues' recording and arrangement regular high

2. ...how past mega-singles 'The Time Is Now' and 'Sing It Back' taught Moloko about uniting a disparate audience regular high

3. "Being with my father is like being in a musical: he could burst into song at any point": ...how Roisin became a singer, what music meant in her family when she was younger, and all about her dodgy-but-drop-dead-cool very first band ("We'd go to rehearsals, turn the lights off and I'd snog one of them")

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4. ...where all those fantastic dresses and mirrorball outfits came from; how 'Sing It Back''s video-director went on to make the promo for Kylie's 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' (or as Roisin calls it, "the la la la song") - and how she has no time for being "styled" regular high

5. ...how much the melancholy and eupohoria of disco mean to Moloko; and what caused the death of disco in the 1970s - not to mention the death of modern dance culture regular high

6. ...why she's such a great fan of filmmaker Elaine Constantine ("being sincere, in this day and age, is the most shocking thing you can do"); how she's always loved the visual side of pop art - and why she has about five "hometown" gigs regular high

7. ...why. for Roisin, northern soul will always be one of the "most sincere" forms of music - and why the dancefloor is a sacred place regular high

8. ...how the video for 'Familiar Feeling' was filmed "in an Irish pub with a huge dancehall at the back of it in London", featuring people from the local northern soul scene she's loved for years ("People are very down-to-earth and ordinary, there's no bullshit, no mwah-mwah kissing - it's get down with it, get dancing, listen to your music...") regular high

Moloko play Belfast's Limelight on May 2 and Dublin Castle on May 3 as part of the Heineken Green Energy Festival

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