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By Lily Moayeri Last Dance I’m the taller, sandy-haired one,” clarifies Hot Chip’s Al Doyle from his home in London during a three-day break from nonstop tour dates. Doyle’s not to be confused with the bespectacled, delicately toned Alexis Taylor, one of the two core members of the group. Taylor is, according to Doyle, “notoriously short. He is exactly the same height as Prince. We looked it up. We haven’t done a back-to-back comparison or anything. It will be a rock ‘n’ roll mystery.” Rock ‘n’ roll is what Hot Chip is moving towards on its third full-length, Made In The Dark — not so much in sound as in sentiment. One of those groups whose sound falls just this side of anything identifiable, Hot Chip’s unquantifiable quality is what has made them such an iconic group among the contingent who is looking for a challenge in their music input. While the group’s debut, Coming On Strong, shrugs off conventional parameters entirely and is an experiment in unusual sound sources, its follow-up, The Warning, is (disappointing for some) conformist. In the interim between The Warning and Made In The Dark, Hot Chip put together a DJ Kicks compilation that, for those who are putting such stock in them, is the key to understanding why their music sounds the way it does and where it might be going in the future. “The influences on the DJ Kicks album are quite interesting in relation to our own album,” says Doyle. “All of those songs are used in a very oblique way. It’s often to do with technique or an approach to music making, to songwriting, and even the integrity is inspiring to us. We want to get away from being thought of as a purely dance act. That’s never been something we ever felt we are.” Not necessarily dance-y, Made In The Dark certainly is pop-y, in the best sense of the word. There is a return to unusual sound sources, but these are manipulated to make the catchiest of melodies. Plus, Doyle and the other members of the group are — for the first time — involved in the recording process with Taylor and the other core half, Joe Goddard. This has made songs such as “Ready For The Floor” and “Hold On” as radio-friendly as you can get (without meaning to) and “We’re Looking For a Lot Of Love” and the title track their easy digital ballad successors. Made In The Dark is the perfect pop package, whether it wants to be or not. “Some people really like the album and other people say it’s awful,” says Doyle. “It’s quite validating to have such a range of responses because it means people are finding different things in the record. That’s what we wanted it to be: something that had different aspects that would appeal to different people. We are a relatively unusual set of people in that we generally keep up with modern dance and pop music, but we also have a great love and respect for older folk and soul music and stuff that people wouldn’t think we’re into that we’re very much into. If everybody knew us personally, [Made In The Dark] would be the record they would expect from us, but it’s caught a few people off guard. It’s quite challenging to the general listener who might not have a wide-ranging interest in music.” For a bunch of fellows — whom Doyle alarmingly refers to as in “early middle age” — that are the stay-at-home type, Hot Chip find little affinity with the commercial music world. Yet they are in the middle of it, at least in their native U.K., and to a lesser degree everywhere else. “People seem to be interested in what’s going on with us,” says Doyle, puzzled. “It’s still very odd for us. There’s a sense of responsibility not to f*ck it up. If you could superimpose the trajectory that we had last year on to this year, and I think about where we would get to, it’s going to be very odd just in terms of becoming that slighter bigger band and all the accompanying baggage of that is kind of scary. How are we going to deal with that in a noble manner?” On the web: hotchip.co.uk |
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Copyright © 2002 Mean Street Magazine, LLC |
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