Part house, part soul, part electronica, this satisfying dovetail is clearly a carefully judged balance between commercial and underground – and yet, prior to her recent success, her life was completely random.

Born in Ireland and raised partly in Manchester, it was only because she moved to Sheffield with her lover that they created Moloko, the equally fashionable but initially directionless band from whence she came.

Now her solo career has burgeoned to the extent that she's now as much a style muse as she is a singer/songwriter, with a shiny mane of Greta Garbo-esque strawberry blonde hair often juxtaposed with the kind of avant garde outfits which could leave Grace Jones balking.

And at 35, she now finds herself looking back on two years in which her second album, Overpowered, became a modern classic adored by everyone from geeky musos to clubbers and the fashionati.

Forget the randomness of the past, the all new Project Murphy was launched with a distinct and independent trajectory. Now she's landed.

"When Moloko broke up I thought it all might get taken away from me," she said. "I got seriously panicked because I'd been doing it for so many years. It was then that I got serious and started being a bit less haphazard about everything.

"With Overpowered I set out to record an album with lots of different writers and producers that reference lots of different things and I did that, so now it makes me quite proud that I sometimes tell people who like my music about Moloko and they don't know who they were. They just know me.

"Now I like to walk a line with everything I do. It's about feeling as alive as possible, feeling vibrant. I mean the whole dressing up thing, it's about me wanting to tell stories, to complement sound with vision. It's just about MORE, you know?"

There are still delightful hints of the random about Murphy, still an air of tongue-in-cheek eccentricity. One minute she speaks softly and sweetly, the next she's mischievously effing and blinding like a navvy.

The accent, meanwhile, is a curious mix of Irish and the northern brogue that she undoubtedly picked up during the formative years in Yorkshire and Lancashire, formative years which also forged the independent musician she is today.

"I don't believe I'd be an artist at all if it weren't for Sheffield," Murphy said. "People who are serious about music are aware of Sheffield, I mean, from no other city could come Cabaret Voltaire and, on the other hand, Human League.

"I remember in Manchester you had every option on the scene, every nightclub – and I went to them all.

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