IN-STORE SESSION:Dance music to feed your heart and soul

Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
Posted by Laila Hanson on 29-May-08 @ 12:41 PM

[4.5/5]
Hot Chip make genre mash-ups an art form on their elegant third album, Made In The Dark. In fact, the album's list of influences is staggering, including (but not limited to) Prince, Four Tet, Kraftwerk, Of Montreal, Pixies, Basement Jaxx, XTC, R. Kelly and Pink (no, really). Like 2006's The Warning, Dark bounces from soulful synthpop ("In The Privacy Of Our Love") to glitch-disco party jams ("Hold On") and rave-ready electro spaz-outs ("Shake A Fist")-sometimes all on the same song (the limb-loosener "Don't Dance"). But whereas Warning sometimes felt out of focus, Dark finds Hot Chip shaping their big ideas into inventive, streamlined songs. Typical is "Ready For The Floor," on which layers of Human League-esque synths and chirpy beat blurps do backflips around each other; the playful new-wave quirkiness of "Bendable Poseable"; or "One Pure Thought," which sees a searing Britpop guitar riff give way to happy-go-lucky percussion and bustling beats. The common denominator tying these songs together is well-crafted hooks-along with plenty of earnest, from-the-heart sentiments. More a collection of pop songs you can dance to than dance music with hints of pop, Dark is one of the first great records of 2008. (ASTRALWERKS) Annie Zaleski

ROCKS LIKE:
Simian Mobile Disco's Attack Decay Sustain Release
Basement Jaxx's Kish Kash
LCD Soundsystem's Sound Of Silver

IN-STORE SESSION WITH VOCALIST/KEYBOARDIST/GUITARIST ALEXIS TAYLOR

You've already played many of the songs on the record live. What was the biggest challenge you faced translating them from concerts into the studio?
We wanted to record in a way that captured our live sound, which is something we've never done before. I guess most bands are bands, and they learn songs together and rehearse them and tour them, and then they record after they've got good at playing them. We have never done that before; we've always made songs in a much more piecemeal fashion.

We recorded in different places. Some of it's recorded in a proper studio with professional engineers. Some of it's recorded in Al [Doyle] and Felix [Martin]'s studio, where we just produced and recorded it ourselves. Other bits were recorded in Joe [Goddard]'s bedroom, where we made quite a lot of the last album. It's sonically and acoustically different according to whichever room we're in and what we were after on each track.

What was your favorite place you recorded?
It was most challenging for us to record in a proper studio, just because we did everything on live tape. Which is kind of a strange thing to do when you're used to just sampling yourself playing and piecing it together later. That was the most fun, but it was just so different from anyone we've done before. It seems like there are more extremes-the tracks meant for dancing are much more danceable, and the slower jams are a lot slower. But the songwriting is solid.
We like writing songs as much as making rhythm tracks. We like all different styles of music, and we try to be good at writing different kinds of music. We don't want something to just work on a sonic level or on a groove level but then have throwaway lyrics. We're quite serious about it being thoughtful.

What were you guys listening to when you were making the record?
I listened to quite a lot of Willie Nelson while making the album. Also Donnie Hathaway, and an Italian musician called Franco Battiato. Terry Riley a lot [and] R. Kelly.

How did these things influence your writing?
"Wrestlers" was musically an attempt to replicate something of the groove [from] the R. Kelly song, "I'm A Flirt." That was a direct inspiration for the music. Willie Nelson's concise songwriting affected songs like "Made In The Dark," the ballads on the record. I don't mean I listened to loads of country music and then decided I'd write country songs-more just the precision with which he writes and says something really amazing about humanity in a very compact form. That's what struck me most about listening to his music. -Annie Zaleski


Official Website: http://www.astralwerks.com


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