Poo kid on the block

It took 40 year-old Dubliner Marcus Lambkin, AKA Shit Robot, a while to get around to recording his debut album. But when he finally did, with last year’s From The Cradle To The Rave, he made it count. A star-studded affair produced by DFA, it featured several tracks co-written with James Murphy as well as vocal contributions from LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. For good measure, it received excellent reviews and Lambkin’s music has received the thumbs-up from the likes of Simian Mobile Disco and Thom Yorke.

Marcus himself is based in a rural area outside Stuttgart, and says that the locale is heavily populated by Swabian farmers. I wonder if he ever sees the farming community brandishing DFA 12 inches?
“No, definitely not,” chuckles Marcus. “They have no idea who I am!”
Of late, Marcus has been busy working on new material, DJing and doing live performances, which are billed as ‘The Shit Robot Show’. These gigs are elaborate affairs, which involve Marcus playing beneath a robot headset and in front of a screen. Earlier this year, he took the set-up to Madison Square Garden, where he and fellow DFA artist The Juan MacLean contributed robotic voices to the epic ’45:33’ during LCD Soundsystem’s final gig.
How did the show go?
“It was amazing,” enthuses Marcus. “I got to play all of the Terminal 5 gigs, as well, in the build-up, and to cap it off by playing Madison Square Garden was something else. But I was so nervous before that show; obviously it was going out live on the web and I didn’t want to screw up. The evening itself was quite hectic – there were a lot of celebrities present, and Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs were running around filming stuff, which is going to be included on the DVD release. They’d filmed a little insert that was played on the big screens before myself and Juan arrived, so we had to get our timing right!
“Luckily, the after-party was in the hotel I was staying in, so that was handy. Susan Sarandon was actually at the gig, and it’s not the first LCD show she’s been at either. It’s one of those things where you go, ‘Really?’ – because you wouldn’t imagine she’d be into it, but she is. Also, Courtney Love was there and even joined a group of us onstage for the finale.”
Does Marcus have any idea what James Murphy’s next move will be?
“Well, they’re putting together that DVD and he’s working on a couple of film things,” he reveals. “But I also think he’s just enjoying not having a schedule for a while. I wouldn’t rule out the LCD crew making music together again, but in terms of them being stuck in a rigid album-tour-album cycle, that is absolutely over and done with. It’s funny, because during that last week of shows in New York, I was thinking, ‘I’m so happy my friends are going to get some time off and fulfil other creative ambitions’. But then after the shows you’d think, ‘God, LCD Soundsystem really are one hell of a live band right now’. It made me a bit sad to realise I was never going to see them in that setting again. So there were some mixed emotions.”
Marcus is currently working on material for his second album and feels that hooking up with some of the DFA crew once again is a distinct possibility.
“That’s the way it’s worked so far,” he acknowledges. “It’s a cliché, but DFA really is like a big family. What happened on the first record is that I got some basic ideas together and then took them to New York to finish them off. But it was all very organic. It just felt right that I should ask Nancy from LCD to sing on a track, and then we went to see Hot Chip one night, and when we were hanging out afterwards I asked Alexis if he fancied working on a track. He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come down tomorrow and do it’. So I imagine it will be a similar kind of process this time around.”

Shit Robot plays Oxegen on Friday July 8.