RÓISÍN MURPHY

The album comes out in a week. CDs and vinyl records are already made, packaged, and shipped. "Cancelling" it is impossible. This isn't the 80s where a label can just eat that kind of expenditure.

the claim that ninja tune are donating proceeds isn't in the article, just the journalist's twitter post, so idk what the deal is there

It's in the article. But you'd be forgiven for thinking that the article ended with the line at the top.

https://i.imgur.com/buJKvn7.png

But about this brother's widow

oh weird

the transphobic current drummer of a formerly-major-label pop/rock act, who has a long-running indie label of his own

this blind item has my curiosity piqued

already answered in the thread. idk anything about the principals of Numbers tho, which would be a better IRL fit than what I assumed was a snarky joke!

Right. I wonder what the "proceeds" from the last one even were, and how long it took to make it into the black

a club-based album from a great live performer that came out during extended closures of clubs and concerts venues is not rly a great test case of the artist’s viability. but note that she didn’t make it to a second album there, and has moved to a label without corporate backing.

she only had a one album deal for roisin machine, though it does seem to have charted a little better than the rest of her solo career. but she's still a rather niche artist, to most people moloko are nothing more than two-hit wonders from two decades ago?

idk anything about the principals of Numbers tho

jackmaster (numbers co-founder, no idea how involved he is in running it these days) said a bunch of transphobic shit on facebook many years ago (despite having sophie on the label!)

"Cancelling" it is impossible. This isn't the 80s where a label can just eat that kind of expenditure.

yeah exactly, which is why i'm not bothered.

Also probably there'd be legal issues given the 'allowable' reasons for cancelling a release are often pretty specifically included in contracts (ie the quality of the recordings being too shit to release, etc). This'll hit Ninja Tune hard enough without them being taken to court over it.

They couldn’t cancel the LP release (assume there is no contractual get-out apart from ‘bringing NT into disrepute’ that would apply in this case) so cancelling all the press/plugging, pulling the advertising and marketing is what’s left over and totally cancellable (my guess is NT was silent while considering what action could legally be taken). That’s a lot, still! A few items might’ve already gone to print but online might be paying out kill fees to journalists if pieces filed/lined up don’t then get published.

I've not worked with a label that cares more about doing things right than Ninja Tune, am p sure everyone there is miserable about this whole mess and that there have been a lot of sleepless nights over the best way to respond to this.

Is it still the Coldcut guys running things there stevie? If so, how hands-on are they?

jackmaster (numbers co-founder, no idea how involved he is in running it these days) said a bunch of transphobic shit on facebook many years ago (despite having sophie on the label!)

he was ousted from having anything to do with numbers many years ago.

The two signings/acoustic performances that she was due to do at Rough Trade East next week have now both been cancelled btw

she's probably playing accordion at her neighbours rn

Is it still the Coldcut guys running things there stevie? If so, how hands-on are they?

It's still their label, but the day-to-day running of the operation has been in the hands of the team they assembled for years now. But the same ideals they started the label with are common among everyone who works there, from my experience.

Looks like the Rough Trade record signings/mini-gigs are being cancelled

https://x.com/artdirectionk/status/1697178957127332316?s=46&t=bJOqpCuQneT7ju08y55VSA

Oh my bad didn’t see NickB’s post.

not sure she's gonna be taking the stage after dee diggs at this one either...

https://ra.co/events/1723612

way to clear your diary

People keep saying it was a ‘private’ conversation shared by someone but that’s not true is it? It’s complicated all that Facebook privacy stuff but if she’s talking on a friend’s FB wall then legally that’s not a private conversation is it?

idk about legally but no i wouldn't exactly say private. not the most public either but not private

Private would be a DM conversation. Conversations on Facebook walls are semi-private depending on the wall-owner’s settings; I think the default is friends of tagged friends can see content, so it’s more like having a conversation in a cafe than it is having a conversation in your house.

or writing your hot takes on the cafe's wall for whoever stumbles by

Ha, she’s signed her bathroom stall graffiti and is now like “oh I never meant for anyone to know that was me to offend”

Rough Trade have also dropped her as album of the month.

Never loved Moloko, but really loved her first two solo records and have stuck around for the ride ever since. Always found her a fascinating enigmatic kind of performer and only discovered she was kinda goofy after following her on IG during the pandemic.

All that said, I'm sort of enjoying imagining her sitting around watching each domino of this album's rollout fall and growing more and more irate.

Lesson? Don't be a fuckin incurious bigot!

so if y'all don't mind, i'm trying to keep track of the other transphobes here

so jackmaster doesn't do anything as far as running numbers (lol)... is he nominally involved? wikipedia still names him but their cite is from the guardian in 2014 and maybe just nobody updated it. anything to do with his actions at Love Saves the Day in 2018? i mean as far as transphobes go he seems like a class act.

the teenage fanclub drummer... who is that right now? they seem to have had a good number of drummers and wikipedia, well, you know. apparently euros childs is a member now? good to see him getting work, unless he's a transphobe, in which case i'm extremely disappointed... he's like the one person involved in all of this i've heard of, i think very highly of gorky's zygotic mynci.

TFC transphobe drummer is Francis MacDonald.

I didn't see it myself but apparently he started spouting his mouth on Twitter a few years back

fortunately it's Brendan O'Hare on a catholic education/bandwagonesque/thirteen

fortunately it's Brendan O'Hare on a catholic education/bandwagonesque/thirteen

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

sure, but it's still disappointing they have a transphobe as their current drummer. being in a band with an outspoken bigot isn't really a good look.

Never loved Moloko, but really loved her first two solo records and have stuck around for the ride ever since. Always found her a fascinating enigmatic kind of performer and only discovered she was kinda goofy after following her on IG during the pandemic.

All that said, I'm sort of enjoying imagining her sitting around watching each domino of this album's rollout fall and growing more and more irate.

Lesson? Don't be a fuckin incurious bigot!

― ⓓⓡ (Johnny Fever)

I don’t think she was a transphobe then… bigots don’t stay dormant for that long.

My bet is on these “fixed” views of hers appearing lockdown-onwards.

It sounds like from some of these social media posts that she's certainly been callous and perhaps less than pleasant towards trans people in the past. Whether or not her views increasingly calcified over time is probably something we'll never know, but maybe she's always been this kind of uninformed asshole.

TFC's Norman Blake has also produced/mixed the appalling Fat Cops, who feature two GC journalists, JK Rowling's husband, Al Murray The Pub Landlord, and Bobby Bluebell. I don't know if he's GC himself - I'd hope not - but it seems that he's happy to give his old scene pals a free pass. In Glasgow as elsewhere, there are too many blind eyes being turned due to personal loyalties, professional connections, careerism etc. There's also that privileged/clueless thing of thinking someone who's always been vaguely progressive/liberal and likes hip music couldn't possibly be a bigot.
I don't think the label in question is FM's btw. The boss of that keeps it well hidden, so acts on the label may well be unaware.

I tried looking up the Francis MacDonald stuff and found people discussing another terfy Glasgow singer who has seemingly avoided cancellation through tweet deletion

mentioned earlier in passing but my wife's heart was broken when she discovered one of her fave indie solo artists is apparently not just a bit conservative but seems to have some absolutely awful thoughts she has successfully buried from view, due to having a vv small cult and apparently realizing she shouldn't follow certain IG accounts nor post vile thoughts under her artist account anymore.

I still think of RM as the singer on 'The Truth' by Handsome Boy Modeling School, in fact that's basically my entire experience of her music.

This chat does make me wonder that on top of all the other ways she's pulled the pin on her career, who the heck is she going to collaborate with in the future? Can't be many people among the type of producers and artists that she's been working with that'll want to be associated with her views, even if they do happen to agree with them in private

I mean yes there is always the keyboard player from elbow and the (ex) banjo player from mumford dream team but

Album of duets with Van Morrison.

Even David 1cke is tweeting about her now, you know you're up shit creek when that happens. Tbf he does describe her statement as "grovelling" but still

she's in purgatory now. she probably doesn't exactly want to be (publicly) associated with the few people who are supporting her at this point, and is losing fans at an alarming rate.

It just gets worse for her: Brendan O'Neill has penned a Spectator column in defence of Murphy, "the Irish songstress".

how many cis points is that?

The two genders, songstress and funnyman

*tugs at braid*

lolll

don't know who Brendan O'Neill is, but I see his head looks like a giant red pill