Hot Chip

The Warning is an amalgamation of great songwriting and forward-thinking pop-production. It’s an honest record – emotionally and sonically, made by people exploring sound in the warmth of home, not studio, and it is a brittle pairing of voices which sing of LOVE, COLOURS, LOSS, and WARNINGS. It is the only record you will hear this year, which is brave enough to try and better all of the best records of yesteryear and tomorrow. If you want something which evokes the textures of Aphex Twin recordings, Madlib’s sense of deranged hip-hop holiday, the intimacy of Prince’s fantastically claustrophobic parades, and more than merely the spirit of certain wonderful Paul McCartney experiments in disco, Hot Chip would recommend The Warning. It’s cheaper than buying the Richard D James Album, Madvillainy, Dirty Mind and McCartney II after all.

One of the most unusual aspects of ‘Boy From School’, and Hot Chip in general, is the direct contrasting of vocal styles, Alexis often taking the higher 'female' lead, and Joe the lower, 'male' response, in a world which recalls the classic soul or country and western duets of the past, but is clearly somewhere stranger altogether. And rather than rich harmonies, they create a denser texture, singing in direct unison, leaving the harmony to the instruments; the effect is quite unique.

The androgynous and yearning tone in Alexis’ vocal performances, and the frailty and primitivism in certain drum sounds, have reminded some listeners of Scritti Politti or the Young Marble Giants, as much as the R Kelly or Wookie tracks that inspire some of the music. The space between conception and realization is where you find Hot Chip; and it's what makes them so distinctive, so fascinating. That and the fact that they are happy to leave imperfections in: “The idea of including the inaccuracies that occur when people play instruments in the song is extremely important to us. It is the antithesis of a lot of modern record productions, where every mistake is ironed out digitally. When I think about the producers and songs that I really cherish, I think that certain rash decisions or mistakes in the playing or mixing are often the very things that I love.”

Hot Chip have made quite a leap with The Warning, in terms of sophistication and clarity. A deliberately simple tune and lyric, such as ‘Colours’, transcends its initial child-like innocence to seem gorgeous and, somehow, profound. “I wanted to write lyrics as direct as the ones you’d find in Kraftwerk songs. We’d just seen them at Brixton Academy and I was struck by how well they said something about motion or light, or radioactivity, in so few words.” (Alexis) “For a while I wanted this album to sound a lot like Can or Neu - I wanted the propulsive force of the song to be powerful but seem effortless and for the keyboard sounds to be glistening and beautifully sculpted, in the way that Kraftwerk make their instruments sound. We were after simplicity and directness.” (Joe)

As ‘The Warning’ says, ‘LET ME SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU’. This time round, you may be able to tell that Hot Chip’s tongues are deeper inside your cheeks than they are embedded in their own.