Moloko

Almost everything told about Moloko starts at the end: two dance-floor anthems, a magnetic singer, electronics with class. What almost never gets told is how it began, and that is the best part. At a party in Sheffield, in 1994, an Irishwoman in her early twenties walked up to a producer she did not know and threw him a line about her tight sweater. He invited her to his studio, recorded her voice, and out of that came a duo, a couple that lasted eight years and four albums. The first of those albums was named exactly after that line. Moloko formed in Sheffield, the city of The Human League and Pulp, and of all the dance acts of its time it had the most improbable start.

A party in Sheffield, 1994

Róisín Marie Murphy was born on 5 July 1973 in Arklow, County Wicklow, in Ireland. Her family moved to Manchester when she was twelve and by the early nineties she was living in Sheffield. She had no record, no band and no plan.

Mark Errington Brydon is English, born on 22 December 1960 in Sunderland, and he did have a trade: he came out of Chakk, a Sheffield funk band whose money paid for the building of FON Studios, one of the city's studios. In 1994 he was producing for other people.

The line they met with is documented and it is the best material in this whole story: "Do you like my tight sweater? See how it fits my body". Brydon invited her to FON to record and the duo was born out of those sessions. They put the line on the cover: the first album, released in 1995, is called Do You Like My Tight Sweater?. The group's name came from Russian, where moloko means "milk", the word that the slang of A Clockwork Orange had put into circulation in English.

"Sing It Back" failed first

The order matters here, because it is usually told backwards. "Sing It Back" was not an instant hit that later got remixes: it is a track from their second album, I Am Not a Doctor, from 1998, and as an original single, released on 8 March 1999, it only reached number 45 on the British chart. It practically flopped.

What changed everything was a remix. Boris Dlugosch's version, reissued in September 1999, went up to number 4 in the United Kingdom, number 1 on the American Dance Club Play chart, 5 in Spain, 11 in the Netherlands and 12 in Ireland, and ended up appearing on more than a hundred compilations. It was later added to the group's next album. A Todd Terry remix, commissioned earlier, had been rejected by the band themselves. There are few lessons as clear-cut about what an arrangement can do to a song.

The number two that almost nobody mentions

With the push from the remix came Things to Make and Do, in 2000, and with it their real commercial ceiling: "The Time Is Now" reached number 2 in the United Kingdom. It is Moloko's biggest chart success, above the number 4 that "Sing It Back" had managed in its remixed version. In the popular story it comes second; in the numbers, first.

There was a third big single that usually gets left out: "Familiar Feeling", from 2003, reached number 10 in Britain. Between the four albums and those three tracks lies the duo's real catalogue, which is a good deal wider than the couple of songs that survived at parties alongside Faithless and the rest of British dance of the period.

Statues and the end

The couple separated in 2002, around the recording of the fourth record. Statues came out in 2003 and is marked by that break-up from beginning to end: it is their most melancholy album and the most uncomfortable to listen to knowing what was coming apart while it was being made. Working together after that has something of an act of resistance about it.

A tour of some eighteen months followed, between 2003 and 2004, and when it ended the group dissolved. There was no dramatic statement and no public row: it ended because it had already ended before. There has been no reunion since, and Murphy has said she has no intention of there being one.

What to remember

Moloko lasted ten years, released four records — Do You Like My Tight Sweater? in 1995, I Am Not a Doctor in 1998, Things to Make and Do in 2000 and Statues in 2003 — and left three songs that are still danced to. The figure that sums them up best is the one for "Sing It Back": number 45 as the original single in March 1999, number 4 with Boris Dlugosch's remix six months later, number 1 on the United States club chart. The same song, another production, another fate.

And then there is the origin, which in their case is not an anecdote but a founding deed. A line about a tight sweater said at a party in Sheffield in 1994, a producer who took her to the studio instead of laughing, and a first record christened with those same words. Few bands have such an exact beginning, and almost none left it written on the cover.

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Sources

Moloko were an electronic duo formed in Sheffield, England, in 1994, made up of the singer Róisín Murphy and the producer Mark Brydon, who were also a couple. Róisín Marie Murphy was born on 5 July 1973 in Arklow, County Wicklow, Ireland; her family moved to Manchester when she was twelve and she was living in Sheffield when the group formed. Mark Errington Brydon was born on 22 December 1960 in Sunderland, England, and had previously been a member of the funk band Chakk, whose earnings paid for the building of FON Studios in Sheffield. The duo originated at a party in Sheffield in 1994, when Murphy addressed Brydon with the line "Do you like my tight sweater? See how it fits my body", which gave its title to their first album, "Do You Like My Tight Sweater?" (1995). Their other albums are "I Am Not a Doctor" (1998), "Things to Make and Do" (2000) and "Statues" (2003). "Sing It Back" belongs to "I Am Not a Doctor"; released as a single on 8 March 1999 it reached number 45 on the British chart, and the Boris Dlugosch remix, reissued in September 1999, reached number 4 in the United Kingdom, number 1 on the Dance Club Play chart in the United States, number 5 in Spain, number 11 in the Netherlands and number 12 in Ireland, as well as appearing on more than a hundred compilations; it was subsequently included on "Things to Make and Do". A remix commissioned from Todd Terry was rejected by the group. "The Time Is Now", from "Things to Make and Do" (2000), reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and is their biggest chart success; "Familiar Feeling" (2003) reached number 10. The relationship between Murphy and Brydon ended in 2002, around the recording of "Statues"; the group played a tour of some eighteen months between 2003 and 2004 and dissolved after it. Murphy has stated that she has no intention of reuniting the duo. The name Moloko corresponds to the Russian word for "milk", spread in English by the slang of the novel "A Clockwork Orange". Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, the Official Charts Company, Billboard and other coverage.