James Murphy worked closely with David Bowie in the years leading up to the iconic musician’s death. First the LCD Soundsystem artist remixed “Love is Lost” from Bowie’s The Next Day, then he enlisted him to provide guest vocals for the Arcade Fire’s “Reflektor” (which Murphy produced), and finally he played percussion on his final album Blackstar. Now, it would appear, Bowie also convinced Murphy to reform his old band.

Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC 6 Music, Murphy talked about advice he received from the Thin White Duke about challenging himself even if he wasn’t sure about it, as NME report. “I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about coming back, putting the band together,” Murphy said. “And I was going through the hems and haws of it, and he said, ‘Does it make you uncomfortable?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Good. It should. You should be uncomfortable.’”

Murphy continued: “And the first thing that popped into my head was, ‘What the? What do you know? You don’t know what it’s like to be uncomfortable.’ That was my thinking. Because of course I’m imagining that if I was David Bowie, I’d just be walking around flipping everybody off, like, ‘I’m David Bowie!’ Like, nobody can say anything! ... That’s not who he was ever in his life. He was always making himself uncomfortable. And it was such a great feeling of, like, you just don’t know what you are to anybody else.”

Earlier this week, Murphy revealed to BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac that he’d been asked to co-produce Blackstar with Tony Visconti, but felt “overwhelmed” by the prospect – although he’d hoped to record a collaborative album directly with Bowie. “I reached out to David and said, ‘I’d love to do a record just me and you.’ He said, ‘It’s funny you mention that, please look me up when you get back to New York.’” Although they met up, Bowie had already begun working on Blackstar with Visconti.

LCD Soundsystem’s comeback album American Dream is out on September 1 – listen to its title track below.