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Hot Chip
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The music making partnership of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin came into existence in gradual stages, and has culminated in their third album Made In The Dark the follow up to the UK gold selling, Mercury Music Prize nominated album The Warning. The nuclei of the band is Taylor and Goddard, school friends who found common ground and began to make home recordings using an odd assortment of cheap synthesizers, guitars and percussion. Clarke, another school friend, joined the duo soon after, impressing them with his quick-witted playing and rather devious musical experiments. The end product of this era was the first full Hot Chip album Coming on Strong. The Warning represented a great step forward in terms of songwriting and production, though the album was still recorded exclusively at home and without recourse to a professional studio (though they were grateful to DFA for the offer). Al Doyle and Felix Martin, already members of the band as well at work on their own musical projects, now joined the band full time as Hot Chip took off as a live entity, performing in the United States, the UK and Europe. The sound of the band evolved towards wilder, heavier electronics, though still coupled with a signature pop aesthetic. The Warning stood out a mile when it was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize last year, its combination of forward thinking pop production, love of 2 step garage and sheer eclecticism captured the essence of rave without, at times, sounding anything like it. From the delicate wistfulness of “Colours”, and the dizzying, almost nonchalant melodies of “Boy From School” to the exquisite heartbreak of the “Look After Me” Hot Chip showed they were equally at home creating songs of intimacy and melancholy as they were dancefloor fillers. The standout track from The Warning was the bruising single “Over and Over” an immediate call to arms that delivered a sly dig to those who heard them as too chilled the first time round. “Laid back? We’ll give you laid back!” From magical bells, chimes and glockenspiels of the opening to the layers to the thumping beats that follow the magnificent repetition was seemingly in all of us when “Over and Over” was nominated for the UK’s prestigious Ivor Novello songwriting award and was included in the year-end critics polls in Rolling Stone, Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll, Pitchfork and iTunes. Remixes for the likes of the Rolling Stones, Scissor Sisters, The Go! Team, and Gorillaz were fashioned before Hot Chip split the duties on a 2 track 12” reworking of “Aerodynamik” and “La Forme” from Kraftwerk’s Tour De France Soundtracks LP that was given a limited release on the German pioneers “Klang Klang Product” label through Astralwerks. They then went on to compile their sublime and acclaimed DJ Kicks album in May this year. Hot Chip have been informed by 2 years of touring across the globe taking in Australia and Japan and are about to embark on a tour of South America. Incredibly they sold out Somerset House in under a day. Live music has always been at the heart of the band, so it seems inevitable that the new album Made In The Dark captures some of the band’s performances in a more traditional, rock music fashion. Powerful amplifiers, keyboards and distortion have all crept into the Hot Chip arsenal. This tougher sound is no more evident than on the Todd Rungden sampling anthem “Shake A Fist” which created a massive stir when it crept out earlier this year on a limited etched 12”. Made In The Dark showcases more ballads from Hot Chip than ever before and a great appreciation of deep soul. Alexis’ voice sounds as tender and beautiful as ever evoking an angelic sensuality of folk acts such as Bonnie Prince Billy and Richard and Linda Thompson. Title track “Made In The Dark” and “We’re Looking For A Lot Of Love” are perfect examples.

Soulful introspections aside songs such as “Bendable Poseable” provide further rhythmical chaos and “Ready For The Floor” and “One Pure Thought” add pure, unadulterated head rush pop into the mix. No song sounds the same but each has it’s place, no surprise coming from songwriters who grew up on Sign ‘O’ The Times and The White Album.

This is a record recorded largely at home and produced entirely by the band (with valuable help from live sound engineer Jonathan Digby). Remarkably, tracks such as “Hold On” and “Out At The Pictures” were recorded fully live as band and in one take. Throughout “Made In The Dark” there are echoes of earlier songs and styles, steps forwards, backwards and sideways. Clarke’s signature guitar and keyboard riffs, Doyle’s high calibre musicianship and Martin’s programming skills have combined with the considerable talents of Goddard and Taylor in a way making the songs even more propulsive, repetitive, rhythmical, methodical, wonky, intimate and beautiful than before. Hot Chip are: Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Al Doyle, Owen Clarke, and Felix Martin
Gang Gang Dance
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The arc and trajectory on which Gang Gang Dance has propelled themselves since their inception can only be described in terms of evolution. Five individuals with strong ties to the art community and almost boundless creative energy orienting themselves into a musical collaboration, the direction of which is almost as unpredictable as it is focused. It can be said that Gang Gang Dance grew out of the turn of the century Null New York scene, as various members played or worked with such outfits as The Cranium, Actress, Russia, SSAB Songs and Jackie-O Motherfucker. The genesis of the band was very much collaborative in nature with Brian Degraw, Tim Dewit, Lizzie Bougatsos, Nathan Maddox and Josh Diamond experimenting in tiny practice spaces and only somewhat larger public venues with various other musicians peripherally involved. At this point the band was called Death & Dying, but by 2001 or 2002 the GGD moniker had been embraced. A trip out to a studio in Kentucky and a few long nights in a tiny studio in Chinatown birthed the 40 minutes that would become their first self-titled full length. Tragically, in 2002 Nathan was struck by lightning and killed while watching a storm on the roof of his apartment building. By 2003 the band had refined the tribal-futurism sound which they had been working with to it’s purest form. In October Revival Of The Shittest was cut together and released on The Social Registry, first in a limited CDR edition of only 100. The release of their first full-length followed. The band was playing to packed clubs in NYC, exploding on stage, often passing out drums and flutes to audience members, their sound one of perfectly controlled havoc. Through the spring and summer of 2004 they began to resurface, often unannounced, with new material that found them preoccupied more than ever before with song writing & dynamics. The live performances were untouchable; bombastic and structured yet still resonating perfectly upon those innate elements of the psyche that their music had been playing to in the earlier years. By the close of 2004 they had played with Slint & Sonic Youth, toured with Animal Collective, cut together and released Hillulah, a live cdep, and tracked most of the material that would become their second full-length God’s Money. With God’s Money set to be released in April the band headed to out play the Vincent Gallo curated All Tomorrows Parties in March of 2005, doing a short tour of Europe which found them playing both Portuguese punk clubs and museum atriums. A proper tour of North America was embarked upon with Blood Lines, an outfit built around the other two members of Tim & Brian’s first band The Cranium. A riot was started in Seattle, members of the press found a new band to champion, and they ended their tour with a legendary outdoor performance on Spring Street in New York City. By the end of 2005 the band had also toured in Australia and Japan. In June of 2007 Gang Gang Dance followed up their constant touring and the critical success of God’s Money with Retina Riddim, a multimedia project which consisted of a 33 minute art film and a 20-minute audio collage both of which were drawn from the band’s archives of their activities from 2005 to 2006 and authored by band member Brian Degraw. The release showed the band’s willingness to embrace all aspects of the their creative nature as well as their ambition to work out of the standard preconceived notions of the music industry. This release was followed in September of 2007 by RAWWAR, a three track EP culled together from material recorded earlier in the year, and hinted at the direction the bands vision was taking. Even more based in classic song structure than God’s Money it featured songs that showed the pop potential of the band’s sound while maintaining their firm commitment to pushing the boundaries of musical convention. Gang Gang Dance’s ambition did not go unnoticed through 2007 as they were approached by The Whitney Museam of Contemporary Art to be included in their 2008 biennial, an offer rarely extended to musicians. For the exhibition, the four again chose to incorperate visual manipulation into their performance; utilizing film projections, a number of participants dressed in ceremonial masks – all elements combining to create a spectacle that was by all accounts breathtaking. Throughout 2007 and early 2008 Gang Gang Dance continued work on a new full-length studio album, Saint Dymphna, to be released in October of 2008. The album takes an even dancier, inclusive direction that continues to emphasize the ritualistic elements of their music. It features a guest appearance from UK Grime artist Tinchy Stryder and represents the most fully realized work by the band.. Saint Dymphna will be preceded by a single, House Jam, that will feature a remix of the track by Hot Chip. After the recording for Saint Dymphna was finished Tim Dewit decided to take a break from his duties in Gang Gang Dance to work on other projects. In his absence the band have bought in Jesse Lee on drums.
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