Biography
Ronan Chris Murphy entered the world in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 1967, and displayed an early knack for the recording industry while still a teenager. Also credited at times as R. Chris Murphy, he launched his career in the early 1980s by providing vocals for the local punk outfit Freak Baby. He exited that group in 1984, the same year drummer Dave Grohl came aboard; Grohl would later appear with the D.C. punk unit Scream, Seattle’s Nirvana, and, beginning in 1995, the Foo Fighters. Murphy himself continued performing through the remainder of the decade with assorted alternative-rock ensembles before redirecting his energies toward production and engineering. During the 1990s and the first years of the following decade he embraced an unusually broad stylistic range, overseeing sessions that extended from Afro-Cuban repertoire with the celebrated Cuban salsa and Latin-jazz ensemble Irakere to progressive-rock projects alongside King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp. Their partnership proved especially sustained: Murphy mixed and engineered fresh recordings issued by the various ProjeKct lineups—ProjeKct One, ProjeKct Two, and ProjeKct Four—and also revisited several of King Crimson’s landmark 1970s albums for remix treatment. Additional collaborators included drummer Terry Bozzio, previously a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and the 1980s new-wave group Missing Persons, as well as Steve Morse, once the guitarist for the Dixie Dregs. In 2000 Murphy handled the mix for Morse’s album Major Impact.
Albums
