WHEN it comes to dance music, James Murphy of the LCD Soundsystem is a most unlikely savior, but in a real sense that's exactly what he is.

With the release of his latest album, entitled Sound of Silver, he's become a fully-fledged concert hall filling international musical force, undeniably at the top of his game. An art rock megastar trapped in the body of a 6'2" New Jersey quarterback, it's the productive tension between competing genres that makes his sound so distinctive and that keeps his band streets ahead of the pack.

Growing in the sleepy commuter town of Princeton Junction, New Jersey in the 1980s, Murphy would head into the local record store of the nearby college town every week. Since at Princeton there wasn't a dance scene or a punk scene or indeed any kind of scene at all to speak of, he never learned the typical rock and roll pieties that say if you like Iggy Pop then you can't like Sister Sledge, say.

His lack of concern about boundary crossing was first the result of ignorance, but eventually it was an informed choice. Rock purity, Murphy decided, was completely boring - and worse, you couldn't dance to it.

You can hear the result of his informed defiance on his latest album, which is unarguably the most exciting new neo punk dance recording of the decade. Track after inspired track address themes that resonate deeply, and each is wrapped up in a seductive sonic wave that transports the listener.

"I always hated dance music," says Murphy during an interview with the Irish Voice. "I had no interest in it at all. Years ago I was a rock kid. I moved to New York in 1989 and at the time dance music seemed really cheesy to me. There was no crossover in the scene, either."

But over time his attitude changed. Moving to New York and not belonging to any particular scene helped.

"The idea of moving to New York was terrifying to me. It was this huge sprawling murderous filthy city. I only lived 15 minutes away in New Jersey, but it was a completely different planet," he says.

New York quickly introduced him to the art rock crowd in the East Village. And as dance music asserted itself in the 1990s his musical tastes evolved, too. For the first time, serious fun was on the menu too.

"I have always liked art rock like Bowie and Kraftwerk and so on, because it was something I've always been intimidated by. I mean, I try to find a place for that stuff but it always feels a little unnatural for me," he says.

"When you're dealing with Bowie, for example, you're dealing with someone with shocking charisma, and I just never felt that that was me. The side of me that was into Black Flag always had a hard time with the side of me that was into Bowie."

That tension, between stripped down rock acts like the Fall and Minutemen and the theatrical excesses of glam rock, say, finally found their full expression in the band that became LCD Soundsystem.

"When you're writing a song you have to ask yourself if the only people who will get your references are white straight men with beards, and if that's true then you have to go back to the drawing board because that's not fun for anybody," says Murphy. "That's what we always talk about in the band. You have to kind of make it fun and enjoyable."

LCD Soundsystem is massive in Ireland and England, and Murphy was startled by the devious stratagems employed by Irish fans to get him to play there.

"I get these e-mails from Irish people who try to guilt trip me into playing Dublin or Belfast because they see my name is James Murphy. They write things like, 'I can't believe you're not here with a name like Murphy it's ridiculous!' Only the Irish try to guilt me into playing," he says laughing.

"My parents are not only Irish, they're from Cork. That's how little mixing they did when they got here. My grandparents and theirs all married Cork people."