Biography

Joseph “Celestaphone” Murphy was born in 1996 to a melomanic family with cleffer parents, an aura which instilled writing and producing music. Surrounding discophiles provided him early run-ins to albums such as Daft, Hounds of Love and Madvillainy. Thus, he developed an affinity for sampling. Celestaphone's youth years found zeal for musicianship (piano lessons, snare-playing) as well as video editing and illustration; the combination provided a flair for software, as well as artistic parlance. It was around 2012 when Celestaphone began releasing music, later emerging under the aegis of Drumhex, his label. This engendered his official debut album, 2017's Robosoul—a blend of hip hop instrumentals loosely-bound by a robot macro-theme. Largely influenced by Frank Zappa and his unifying "Project/Object" approach, Celestaphone creates thematic and stylistic overlaps between his own work for continuity's sake, all while remaining unpredictable. In 2018, he expanded upon the futuristic motif with Tying Up Loose Friends, personating an angsty rhyming anti-hero and his passionate whining: the freshest entity of Celestaphone's musical diegesis at the time. His multicharacter cadence and colorful world-building contrasts with typically self-serious genres.