James Murphy. Illustration by Tom Bachtell

When James Murphy, the pop musician, disbanded LCD Soundsystem, in 2011, he made a public remark or two about wanting to spend more time with his coffee. This was shorthand for a happier and more grownup life—Murphy was then forty-one, and a little frayed—but he also meant what he said. A year later, he took a two-day course, in London, with Gwilym Davies, who had recently won the World Barista Championship; he also began to consult with other coffee professionals about creating his own espresso blend. In time, Murphy met James Freeman, the founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, which has coffee shops in California and New York. Freeman is a former classical clarinetist with a priestly air. A few weeks ago, they arranged a formal coffee tasting, or “cupping,” at the back of Blue Bottle’s Brooklyn location, close to Murphy’s home, in Williamsburg. Murphy arrived on a foldup bicycle, looking eager but not all that rested, bringing news about his house renovation. “How does a wine fridge cost two thousand dollars?” he asked Freeman. “It’s a small fridge that doesn’t get that fucking cold. It’s a dorm fridge that’s broken.”

Small bowls of ground coffee were lined up on a countertop. To one side was a coffee grinder, and a row of aluminum spitting mugs. “I feel I would lose myself for a good two years if I went too deep,” Murphy said, of his interest in coffee. “I’m a rabbit-holer.” He and Freeman discussed some coffee shops they had separately visited, in Reykjavík and São Paolo, and then turned to the proposed Murphy blend, which may be sold both by Blue Bottle and by Murphy himself, if he opens the general store that is another part of his midlife project. Freeman said, “My guess is we have very similar desires: to not get too infatuated with the ultrabright school.” He was referring to a current fashion, with Nordic roots, for tart, acidic coffee.

“We’re older than the average person who’s excited about Scandinavian roasting,” Murphy said. “I’m superglad that it’s happening, but I also don’t want to drink it all the time.” He said that he positioned himself, in coffee’s avant-garde, as “more Benjamin Britten . . . than a chainsaw on cement,” which prompted Freeman to describe how much he’d been enjoying Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” in his car. “That was right before he broke with harmony, and you can hear him pushing, knocking on the door: ‘Let me out!’ But it’s still really, really beautiful and enveloping and huge. So maybe this is a little bit like that.”

They crouched over the dry coffees—two from South America, two from East Africa, one from Indonesia—and sniffed them. “Bring the cup close to your face,” Freeman instructed. “I like to smell with my mouth open. Tap each cup three times.” Murphy, who had done this before, tapped and sniffed. “Wow, that’s crazy!” he said of a Brazilian peaberry.

Hot water was poured into the cups; more smelling. On the third pass, they tasted a spoonful of each. “Oh, that’s nuts. It’s still crazy! Beautiful,” Murphy said, and spat.

One of Freeman’s colleagues then made an espresso that combined three of the five coffees. “The ball’s in your court,” Freeman told Murphy. “If you could wish for something on that, what would you wish?” Murphy, saying that he found its sourness too dominant, suggested a new ratio: “Forty, thirty, thirty.” As this was being prepared, Murphy told Freeman of the times in his life when he lets his coffee standards slip. One is on American Airlines flights—“Because it’s not coffee. It’s this other beverage that means I’m landing.” The other is when he skis: “I want a mug of grocery-store French roast with Land O’Lakes half-and-half.”

Freeman winced. “Don’t go skiing.”

They tasted several more espressos. Murphy was no longer spitting, and the conversation sped up. Over objections, Murphy embraced the word “hipster,” saying, “I’m a d.j., and I live in Williamsburg, and I run an independent record company. Come on. I’ve got a collapsible bike.” He said that his father had given him six pieces of advice. “One was: How you leave a public bathroom is how you know if you’ve got ethics.”

“Whoa!” Freeman said.

“My eyeballs are going,” said Murphy.

He sipped. “There’s a really weird taste that I got at the end. Which is pot.”

After another espresso, Freeman said that he had tasted purple.

Murphy described the synesthesia that he sometimes experiences, as a d.j., when contemplating a sequence of records. “I think, There are too many red ones.”

Freeman said that Olivier Messiaen, the French composer, used to experience something similar. “Just another thing we have in common,” Murphy said.

Murphy realized that he could no longer taste. Freeman encouraged him to take the experiment home, and he packed the coffees, and the blends, into three or four small tote bags. Murphy looked at these; then he took off his belt and threaded it through the tote-bag handles, then tied the belt in a loop and threw it all over his shoulder, like a rabbit hunter, and cycled home. ♦