Their live shows will make you dance like a robot from 1984, but their albums take the music to another dimension. Jim Carroll gest a taste of Hot Chip.
FROM the way Alexis Taylor tells it, Hot Chip's appearance at the South By Southwest festival in Texas this year featured his most rock'n'roll moment ever. Toward the end of a show which had been energetic, sweaty and gloriously gleeful, a visibly excited Taylor accidentally flung his tambourine into the crowd. Taylor appeared somewhat aghast at what had happened and stood awkwardly on the stage looking out. "I was waiting for someone to just hand the tambourine back to me," he says. This, though, was Texas and no-one budged. "Unfortunately I didn't get it back."
Throwing instruments from the stage is not, therefore, likely to become a Hot Chip trait. It doesn't suit them, to be honest. While their live shows are chock-a-block with music to dance to like a robot from 1984, their records demonstrate a strangely beguiling tweeness.
The sound of indie kids falling in love with electronic bleeps and beeps, Hot Chip's music is smart and arch. Their current album, The Warning, pushes many buttons with its gentle, middle-of-the-electronic-road harmonies, slightly warped melodies and charming C86 lyricism. If soft rock can enjoy another go in the limelight, who's to say no to Hot Chip's soft-bop?
The Hot Chip story began in a south London classroom when Putney schoolboys Taylor and Joe Goddard met and decided to make music together. "We were 17 or 18 and it was just the two of us. From the time I was 16, all I wanted to do was make records."
While Goddard had fallen under the influence of hip-hop records by the likes of Madlib, Taylor was obsessed with Prince. "Obsessed" is the right word.
"I'd write letters to other Prince obsessives in school using that whole Prince thing of 'u' instead of 'you'." There's even a song on the duo's debut album, Coming On Strong, entitled Down With Prince, about his Paisley Park fixation.
When Taylor talks about some of his favourite music (including Paul McCartney, Bobby Birdman and R Kelly), you can tick off tracks that tip the hat to these acts. What's interesting about their sound, however, is how cohesively they manage to make these diverse influences sit so well together.
Taylor is particularly interested in making Hot Chip sound soulful. "There have been some great and inventive modern soul records that have stuck with me. And then there are people who are soulful in a broader sense, country singers like Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt. They had more effect on me than anyone contemporary who Hot Chip might be bundled in with."
While Taylor and Goddard wrote and recorded all of their debut album on their own, the Hot Chip live experience took on a different look and sound. Aided by three extra musicians - Owen Clarke, Felix Martin and Al Doyle - the five Chips really do take these songs to another dimension.
It's something Taylor is keen to continue. "We started out as a two-piece but it's only when we started playing live that we enlisted the others. We'd already made the first record at that stage so, really, Hot Chip have two different strands. There's me and Joe making the records and then we're joined by Owen and Felix and Al for the live version of those albums, which tends to be very different.
"I think it's good to have those two sides because it would be boring if we just repeated the album live. You can do very different things in a room playing to people than when you're in a room layering sounds and getting embedded in production trickery."
It's an approach which Taylor wishes other bands would copy. "The Make-Up are a band I've always really liked," he says by way of example. "They released a live album and it's great as a document of what they were like live, but you lose a huge amount from not being in the room with them. What they did on record in studio with no-one else in the room was far more interesting."
Despite the success of their action-packed live shows, Taylor still prefers that he and Goddard control the recording process. "It's true that the way we were playing live made us think again about what we could do on record. In the end, though, we didn't go off and make a record like that. It's not a record of the five of us all playing together. I think it was more the spirit of the live show which stayed with me and Joe when we started working on the new album. There was a notion for the five of us to jam and write songs but I didn't think it would come up with anything interesting."
Indeed, Taylor seems reluctant to even consider hiring someone else to help out with production ideas. "We did one track with Tim and James from DFA and that was our one attempt at making something with exterior help," he says. "It worked out well as a record but it was not an enjoyable experience in terms of feeling involved. It felt quite alien to have someone else in the room." He feels they work best as a duo because they've known each other so long.
"The process we have at the moment works so well that there's no real reason for us even to speak to each other! It's quite an intuitive process so we're not looking for someone else to come to produce us.
"We're not a band, we're not Talking Heads, where you get Brian Eno in to produce you but you're still sure of who you are as a band. We're just a songwriting and production duo, so the idea of getting someone to produce us is not the most natural thing to do."
Hot Chip have become a full-time venture for all involved, allowing Taylor to take his P45 from Domino Records, where he was previously employed. "At Domino, I wrote press releases and updated the website. I was there for all the Franz Ferdinand stuff, so I saw that weird transition from these demos, which sounded very pop and Devo, to the four of them becoming this huge, successful group. It was really interesting to be there and to able to soak up all that information and see how it could be applied to Hot Chip."
The Warning is out now on EMI Records. Hot Chip play the Electric Picnic in September
