Hot Chip
WARNING!
After Coming On Strong with Their Debut, Electro-Funk Outfit Hot Chip Are Eager to Prove They're No Joke
Equally influenced by Kraftwerk and R. Kelly, London quintet Hot Chip are a hard group to pin down. Their debut, Coming On Strong, played like a low-fi take on '80s-era Prince with some nonsensical lyrics, but the band has stepped up with its sophomore album, The Warning, offering serious dance-floor grooves while maintaining their wry persona. What's most unique about them, however, has remained constant: Onstage, Hot Chip eschew the preprogrammed synths and laptop aesthetics that define so much of what is considered electronic music these days, actually playing almost everything live. Hot Chip's keyboardist and guitarist, Al Doyle, spoke with Barnes & Noble.com's Bill Pearis about the pitfalls of this approach, and the somewhat serious turn of the new album.
Barnes & Noble.com: There's a lot of growth between Coming On Strong and The Warning -- musically, lyrically, and in the production -- yet the discs were made within a year of each other.
Al Doyle: A lot of it is just simple things like getting a better handle on the software used to record the album. We also had some better equipment. But I think the songwriting has grown, and we have a better idea of what does and doesn't work. Hopefully we're a little braver this time. Coming On Strong covers a lot of ground but extremes have become even more disparate on The Warning. You've got some songs that you might not expect to be on the same album, but that's all good, I think. It's good to have a record that has songs you can play in a club, and some songs you can listen to in your bedroom. We call it value for money.
B&N.com: While you wouldn't call The Warning a serious record, you seem to be taking things more seriously than on the first album, which was a bit more jokey. Was this something you set out to do?
AD: Joe [Goddard] and Alexis [Taylor] say there wasn't any deliberate intent, but I think subconsciously there was. [It's] no mistake we didn't turn out Coming On Strong II. The concern was to make something as different as possible and not retread any ground. With that in mind, you're probably always going to get a more serious record. I think there are songs from Coming On Strong which could have been on The Warning if they'd been jazzed up a little. "Crap Kraft Dinner" is a really great song and would fit with what we're doing now, but certainly there are songs that wouldn't. There's an element of not wanting to be pigeonholed as a comedy band. We've got this opportunity to reach a few more people and we don't want to release anything we might be embarrassed about. Not that that's a major concern. Some of the lyrics are, if not silly, quite nonsensical and out there. Hopefully it's not too much of a "dad's record."
B&N.com: New Order have made a long career of silly lyrics.
AD: We're all big fans of New Order. Technique is a record that Alexis is particularly into, and he's admitted that "No Fit State" was a straightforward attempt to write a New Order song. I don't think it quite turned out that way, but it is wearing their influence on its sleeve.
B&N.com: It is unique for an electronic-based band that in concert all your music is played live -- no sequencers or MIDI.
AD: Some of the drum machines are programmed, but for the most part everything is live -- no laptops. There's a certain psychological process an audience goes through the second they see a laptop on stage. You think to yourself, How much of this is being fed from the computer? So we were desperate not to have to resort to that. It does mean there are some things that are lost, musically, when playing live, but there are so many more interesting things to watch when there are five guys bashing away at these strange devices.
B&N.com: Your keyboard stands are low, and you all play hunched over them. Have there been any back pain problems?
AD: [laughs] Yes there have. Plus, we don't have our own roadies, so we have to lug all that stuff around ourselves. There's definitely need for some medical insurance.
B&N.com: Or taller stands.
AD: Maybe holes in the stage so we go down lower. I'm all for getting better keyboard stands. I was reading Thomas Dolby's blog the other day. He's got the most ridiculous live setup you've ever seen, including these $800 keyboard stands you just push or pull to make them go higher or lower. You don't have to take the keyboards off to adjust them. To a keyboard player, this is the Holy Grail. If you have a really complicated setup, you have to pick it all up and give it to someone else so you can adjust the height and then put it all back on. Then there's the classic accident that always happens where you can't be bothered and try adjusting it with the keyboards on the stand -- which ends up with everything falling over and a broken, irreplaceable vintage keyboard.
B&N.com: Is that the biggest pitfall of touring?
AD: Things do get more exciting when that happens. We're just a classic band for breakages, and there are some tempers in the band. The instruments suffer because of it. I've taken a drumstick to my Roland SH101, which is not a good idea. In Austin, Alexis threw a tambourine into the audience and hit some guy on the head. It obviously hurt the guy, but also broke the tambourine. Alexis still had the audacity to ask for it back. Things do happen but we are getting a bit more professional, bringing backup equipment on tour, and getting people to help us. So hopefully we'll get to this Rolling Stones stage where we breeze onto the stage, play a few riffs and breeze off. Let somebody else color-code the wires.
July 2006
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