Snobcast: Hot Chip
Written by Father Guido Sarducci IV // February 4, 2008 // The Conservatory // 9 Comments
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Electro-pop.
I’ve never liked the word. Like a cigar, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and yet I always take one when offered. I feel like an amnesia sufferer when ever thinking of the topic. I will swear up-and-down that I can’t stand the genre and then I catch myself enjoying, ugh, Moby. Well, finally I have a band that doesn’t force me to contradict myself. Hot Chip is that band.
Maybe the reason I can get behind this five-piece electro group is because they have soul. Their second album, 2006’s The Warning, sounds like Kraftwerk being influenced by Afrika Bambaataa, rather than the other way around.
At the center of this broadly appealing band (they’ve now remixed Kraftwerk, Gorillaz, CSS, and Amy Winehouse) is two bespectacled, late-twenty-year-old Londoners who have been making music together almost since they first met, 16 years ago. Alexis Taylor is the complicated, layer obsessed studio musician while Joe Goddard tends toward more meager songwriterly structures. The pair first formed Hot Chip in 1996, playing Pavement and Velvet Underground covers before becoming interested in dance music.
After putting out two EPs (Mexico and Sanfrandisco), the duo debuted with Coming on Strong. Inspired by such unlikely subjects as Destiny’s Child and Justin Timberlake, critics weren’t sure what to make of the album. Were these white kids from Putney sincere or was it a prank. While lyrics like “Driving in my Peugeot/ 20-inch rims with the chrome now/ Blazing Yo La Tengo/ Driving around Putney with the top down” may sound like novelty, Hot Chip truly enjoy the cheesy R&B they reference.
On The Warning Hot Chip became a five-piece and were determined to keep the album from being mistaken for an in-joke. However, the single “Over and Over” is still just a repetitive dance song about repetitive dance songs. Though the band is still surprised by the popularity of that song, the new album Made in the Dark is sure to attract new fans.
If you’re not already a fan than listen carefully to this weeks Snobcast lead-off, “Ready for the Floor”. It’s just another earnestly silly, anti-club dance track from a elctro-pop band that doesn’t want to be popular.
Playlist:
“Ready For The Floor [Soulwax Dub]” Hot Chip Most Of The Remixes… Mixed By 2 Many DJ’s
“Steam Machine” Daft Punk Alive 2007
“Because We Can” Fatboy Slim Moulin Rouge
“Cominagetcha” Propellerheads Decksandrumsandrockandroll
“Leave Home” The Chemical Brothers Gone In 60 Seconds OST
“Girl Boy Song” Aphex Twin Richard D. James Album
“Kid For Today (Stereolab Mix)” Boards of Canada In A Peaceful Place Out In The Country – EP
“Tonto (Four Tet Remix)” Battles Tonto+
“Body Buzz” Aloha Light Works
“Gyroscope” The Dismemberment Plan Emergency & I
“Repeater” Fugazi Repeater + 3 Songs
“Ursa Minor” At The Drive-In Vaya [EP]
“The Sky Is Broken” Moby Play
“Born Slippy (Nuxx)” Underworld Trainspotting
“Temptation” New Order Trainspotting
Snobcast:
Click here to get your own player.DISCLAIMER: Songs featured on the Snobcast are FOR PROMOTIONAL USE
ONLY. If you like what you hear, go buy the albums – contact us if you
don’t know where to find them. And if we feature your music and you
want it taken off the Snobcast, email us at GoDonnybrook@gmail.com.
Rock!
9 Comments on "Snobcast: Hot Chip"
Ha! Ready for the Floor is the first song on the D+N BFF mix this month. It starts a mix off so nicely.
No LCD Soundsystem? Or Har Mar Superstar?
By now everyone should know how I feel about LCD Soundsystem.
-Guido
A big woo! and hoo! for the selections this week. Me being the big Aphex Twin and Fugazi fan that I am, I found it odd to see them each with a track here. Any goddamn way, the Snobcast gets a thumbs up from the sexiest black man this side of Bushwick Bill.
Fuck yeah, Guido… ’tis an excellent selection this week. I’ve found that DC is a warm petrie dish for electro-pop dance heads to flourish, and I’m fast becoming one of them. CSS and Brazilian Girls are some of my new favorites, but I was particularly astonished and delighted to see that you included the emo classic “Ursa Minor” from At the Drive In– that really takes me back, man! Thanks for your excellent, if snob-ish, expertise on such matters.
Re: Lady Z
Have you been to a Brazilian Girls show yet? When we saw them in Boulder half the audience ended up on stage smoking joints and getting (mostly) naked. Unfortunately the second time I saw them (at the Ogden) no one was aloud on stage.
Holy Shiite fucking Muslims. The Boy/Girl song is, like, one of my favorite songs of all time and one of the most brilliant things ever conceived on any album, in any genre, fucking EVER.
Erection!
The song “Over and Over” is actually a response to critics who said that the band’s first record was too mellow and lacked a real single.
“Laid back? Laid back?!? Laid back–we’ll give you laid back!”
The irony, of course, is that all of their best material is more uptempo.
True. “Over and Over” was a response to critics, but it is also a repetitive dance song about repetitive dance songs.