You can listen to Hot Chip’s new album ‘Made In The Dark’ NOW at ClashMusic.com
Cover stars of Issue 24 of Clash Magazine, here we present an excerpt from the interview with the coolest geeks on the dancefloor, Hot Chip…
2008 is about to find its wheezing frame electrocuted into life by a record that (justified hyperbole alert!) already ranks as a contender for album of the year.
“The way we work as a band means there’s no real cut-off point or start date for new projects; we just record all the time.”
Not so much pushing the envelope as burning it on a midnight pyre then inventing email, ‘Made In The Dark’ sees Hot Chip redefine pop through a series of songs which effortlessly flit between heartbreaking solipsism, electro dizziness and cinderblock dance – often within the same track. Whilst many will draw comparisons with the likes of Prince, Junior Boys and Moroder, the essence of Hot Chip is better discovered between the cracks – wherein ‘Wrestlers’ candidly apes Saturday tea-time telly, ‘In The Privacy Of Our Love’ winks at The Housemartins and ‘Whistle For Will’ is John Carpenter conducted chamber music. Truth is, you could play ‘Pin The Reference On The Band’ for hours and still not get close to Hot Chip’s anus.
Pristine on record, Hot Chip are a sweaty bollock of joy live – with much of ‘Made In The Dark’ already familiar to those who were lucky enough to catch one of their guttural festival appearances over the past year or so. Balancing the soulful fragility of lead singer Taylor against the fidgeting hive of activity beyond is no mean feat – yet Hot Chip deliver effortlessly on both record and stage. However tilt the lenticular a couple of degrees and you’ll find Goddard, Al Doyle, Felix Martin and Owen Clarke just as able to mute their presence; allowing Taylor’s cracked pepper falsetto to become the glacial focus of the 21st Century torch songs that punctuate their work.
A bastion of good humour and graphite wit, Hot Chip also represent a rare plumage within the music industry; eschewing po-faced narcissism in favour of self deprecation, surreal adjuncts and a Ye Olde sense of fun. Novel? Yes. Novelty? Not a fucking chance. Snaring the band as they gear up to snap the backbone of 2008 with their spastic pop charge, Clash spent the evening with Hot Chip down their local; getting chatty about the new record, discussing Ancient Rome’s answer to Batman and assessing the follicle sideline of an Eighties electro legend. Fix up, read sharp!
How long were you recording ‘Made In The Dark’ for? Did you take a break after ‘The Warning’?
Alexis: We went pretty much straight into it after ‘The Warning’. The way we work as a band means there’s no real cut-off point or start date for new projects; we just record all the time, then try and work out what it is we’ve been recording and whether it should go on to an album or an EP.
Joe: The songs we’ve done for the next record are amazing…
Alexis: Yeah, the few that we have already got recorded for the next record I think are pretty amazing. But with this album, ‘Shake A Fist’ and ‘We’re Looking For A Lot Of Love’ were probably the first we made that are now on this record. We’d keep going away on tour and coming back, going away on tour and coming back… bringing all these bits we recorded in different places and from points over the last couple of years. Then we had to put them together.
You have very distinctive videos – is this something to which you have much input, or do you hand creative control over to the director?
Joe: Yes. Well some of them. And some of them no input…
Felix: That’s a qualified yes.
Joe: So basically, the good ones we had a lot of input with. Although we’d never knowingly make a bad one. ‘Over And Over’ and ‘Ready For The Floor’ had heavy input from us because the director (Nina Nourizadeh) has been a good friend of ours for years now and we developed the concept over many many sessions. Basically sitting in the pub and discussing stuff. And they still turned out wrong… (Laughs). It’s good that we can meet with him socially and talk it all through. The key point in the ‘Over And Over’ video where the green screen is never actually replaced with anything was Alexis’ idea.
What do you think of mainstream pop at the moment? Is it something you take an interest in?
“Kylie wrote a song for us and it was fucking rubbish. To be honest, I don’t think she’s a songwriter.”
Joe: Most of it is just rubbish isn’t it? Overall I think it’s pretty much how it has been for the last five years or something. There are these wonderful little gems amongst a sea of nasty, horrible turds. Horribly diseased. In fact some of them now aren’t even turds – they’re just grey little pebbles. So boring.
Felix: Like chalky dog muck from the Eighties.
Joe: There was that recent one ‘How To Save A Life’ by The Fray. “Now I know how to save a life” – turns out all he’s got to do is talk to them. I’d fucking kill myself if that guy came over to me!
Were you annoyed to be tagged as Nu Rave around the time of ‘The Warning’?
Alexis: Yeah, totally. I feel it was completely made up (as a genre) and plenty of bands were quite happy to be a part of it as it helped them out. We weren’t though.
Owen: People basically liked wearing bright clothes.
Joe: We did actually have plenty of opportunities last year where people asked us to align ourselves with Nu Rave, but we never did. And we might have got caught up in Nu Folk because of the connection with Four Tet.
Does it piss you off getting hauled in to genres like this?
Joe: Yeah. Maybe there have been bands who really feel they’re part of something – like Cologne in the Seventies, or Manchester in the late Eighties. Maybe some of those people in those bands at that time were playing together all the time, sharing a rehearsal space and had similar ideas about politics or something. But we’re not part of anything like that. It’s just not accurate. I mean there was a point when copying Gang Of Four defined indie music and I was kind of thinking that, “God, old rave records are so much more interesting than this”. But there was never any scene that I felt part of – I just like old rave records.
Al: Even if there were a couple of our songs that would fit into that, it would only be a couple of songs. It would never be what we were about.
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