No Faker

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more buzzed-about artist in 2012 than Chet Faker. Known to his parents as Nick Murphy, his debut EP Thinking In Textures came from seemingly nowhere earlier this year, tapping beautifully into that beatsy world of R&B, hip hop, soul and electronica that has slowly been filtering into the country thanks to overseas artists like The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, How To Dress Well and many others.

Proof in the pudding that 2012 has been massive, this scribe catches Murphy only a few days home after supporting The Temper Trap on their recent jaunt to the UK and Europe – “I was surprised about a) how many people actually came down for my set, and b) knew my music and were getting into it. Which was nice. I went in there not really expecting much, but it was really good.” It's a pleasant theme for the interview – Murphy is humble, down to earth as you like, approachable; his inner workings an open book for the entirety of our chat.

Given the love showered upon the man, you wouldn't blame him for acting otherwise, but he also hasn't really had the chance to let it go to his head. “Yeah, absolutely [it's been surreal]. Someone asked me if I was nervous at South By [Southwest] recently, and I kinda thought back and realised I can't remember being nervous. I think because I just wasn't present. I was so overwhelmed by the whole experience, it didn't really sink in. It sinks in slowly, every now and then I pinch myself and go 'Whoa, I'm playing at Splendour, or the Opera House…' It's actually really crazy; I went from having all this time to just sit around and make music, to going all around the world and actually having to pre-plan to sit down and write music, you know?”

And it's here already we find the first sticking point of his success. Murphy went from meddling around his garage, making beats at his leisure, to being thrust out into the world to a demanding — and rapidly growing — fan base. He yearns to return to that garage. “I've had these little snippets of like a week or two weeks off, but for me it's good to get into a groove of it, so you get through those two weeks and it starts to come out,” he explains, never complaining, just being honest.

“I mean that's not true, I've got like 26 preliminary tracks at the moment, which is heaps, but I so wanna work on this album and it's the biggest thing I wanna do right now. I'm going and playing all these shows which is so much fun but I almost feel guilty having all this fun, because this full-length is just going around in my head with ideas. It's like there's a massive party in my head and I just need to kick everyone out.”

While Thinking In Textures did feel a little out of the blue, that was by no means the case for Murphy, who's been in and around a tight-knit disco/house community in Melbourne for years now. “From the outside it looks like a big jump trailing back on the stuff I have done, but for me it wasn't that big a jump,” Murphy begins on his humble beginnings. “I'd been doing a lot of this beats and electronic stuff basically since I was 15. I had a loop program on my computer, but I was never really sold on the music I was making, I was still working it out.

“I don't think I really had the confidence either to put it out because I didn't know anyone that was doing beats. That's not to say no one was doing it; I just didn't know them. There was definitely a big confidence issue going on there. I was in bands with other people and they kinda had creative control and I was cool to just do my bit. Whereas this was kind of the first time I worked on some stuff, and over the years I got a little bit more confidence with each thing.

“I put No Diggity on YouTube, so that was the next step to put it out. It kinda went off from there and I kinda had to step up to the plate.” His cover of the Blackstreet classic certainly got the ball rolling for Murphy, smashing blogs like only a fresh new remix can. And while it is a good kick-off point, the real joy for Murphy is that people are happy to move on from it and most importantly, are really digging his own productions. “It's actually a massive weight off my shoulders. I was just thinking, 'What if I'm that dude who covered No Diggity for the rest of my life?'” he laughs.

“And I didn't really have any sense of ownership to that song, even though it was my recording… I felt like it was pure novelty. I dunno if that's true or not, you're always your harshest critic. When I put [Thinking In Textures] out, that was a really good feeling to put originals out and then to see people actually appreciate that as well. I felt really validated in the stuff I was doing.”

Like any artist, Murphy is precious of his own work. Not in a hoity-toity, pretentious kinda way; it's just a very personal process – one that he's now finding difficult to get back to given there's a whole new audience to think about outside of his own brain. “Yeah,­­ I'm actually finding it really hard at the moment. I've been reading a lot and talking a lot… I mean conversation is one of the best things you can do as a creative, is to talk to other people and talk about ideas.

“And I found focusing on the process has been really important in looking at how I'm approaching the songs. So when I first started working on this full length, I was just trying to mimic the EP, and I didn't even realise I was doing that. Subconsciously I was like, 'Yeah I'm gonna do that again, but bigger'. But I wasn't there anymore. That was the music I wrote when I had heaps of time on my plate and I'd ride my bike to work and go for a run and chill out in my studio and smoke cigarettes, you know? But that's not what I'm doing now, now I'm doing a whole lot more all-new territory. One of the biggest things for me is, with the music I'm making now, I'm listening to it and I feel like this is really different. But I've just gotta stay true to the fact that this is what I'm writing and make sure it's the best it can be and not just like the EP.”

And like the process of writing new material, Murphy initially found translating those first recordings into a live show a difficult, but important, evolution. “It took me like three months to turn those seven tracks into a live show. I found it pretty hard because initially I was holding on to those songs, and yeah, trying to turn that into a live show. What I had to do in the end of or just start to do was let go of those recordings and forget about the recordings and just focus on the songs, if that makes any sense. So I play with a drummer, guitarist and bass player now and I've got keys and a bunch of gadgets, a more traditional set up.

“It changes the music but I dunno, it's still in there – the sense of the songs is still there – but I had to let go of a lot of elements because it's a different setting. That music works in headphones, but the only way it was gonna work live for me is with a laptop and pressing play, and I really didn't wanna do that. I wanted to show that I can play and perform these things.”

And so far, so good. “I've definitely got in the swing of it. I've only played like 22 shows, but I haven't really played a bad show. I've had a few fuck-ups, but it's been really good and I'm feeling really good about it. And the low tempo, it's all groove-based, so as long as you're feeling it, it works.”