Now that I've decided to focus the music section of Silverwagon on electronic and its many forms, the London-based, new wave, dance rock group Hot Chip seems like a good start. (As well as the fact that they're the top post on a bunch of other music blogs recently.)
Let's start with the name. As soon as I read it I thought of chip beef on toast. When I think of chip beef on toast and then think of British electronic music, I laugh. So then I checked them out on itunes and I laughed at them again, this time because the album cover art work made me think of a person with a emotionally devestating IQ attempting to build a keyboard and then I thought of chip beef on toast and kept laughing. So I played some samples. . .
Hot Chip makes really authentic electronic music. They don't make any really memorable music, it's just fun to listen to. As I'm listening to No Fit State, hearing one singer repeat "I'm in no fit state," while the other lists reasons why he's in no fit state in a sort of call and response thing, I keep thinking: I hope this song keep going for around an hour. This is all sung over a droaning synth-pop keyboard and drooping base line, but it makes sense. Hot Chips songs would make the perfect soundtrack to a dream about playing video games at a friend's house afterschool in fifth grade. Sitting there on the couch with a bag of doritos open, shoes off in dim light. The clicks and gliding pops of Hot Chip's songs and their joking lyrics are the right sounds for listening alone or with a few friends-this isn't really dance floor fare.
Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor write this on their myspace page in an effort to explain their music. . .
"we started making music because we were bored with alot of other music. We loved the idea of 'pop' music but not the people who make 'pop' music now. We loved Phil Spector and the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Robert Wyatt, timbaland and Madlib, Brian Eno and Devo, Anti-Pop Consortium and Aphex Twin, Will Oldham and Royal Trux. We decided to make our band different from most electronic music by playing everything live- no backing tracks, no computers. We decided to make our music different from most indie music- 4 keyboards and a drum machine, not all guitars. We decided to write folk songs and record them on old synthesizers. We decided to sing honest words about food and love, and try to make people laugh the way you laugh at richard pryor in the same song too. We made one album in Joe's bedroom for Moshi Moshi records, then we made another album for EMI still in Joe's bedroom (this one is coming out next spring). We used a computer to make them but almost everything on them was played by us with a keyboard on our lap whilst sitting on the bed."
On their most promising song, Over and Over, Hot Chip sings "Over and over. . .like a monkey with a minature cymbal, the joy of repetition really is in you." That sums it up, but the repetition is infectious.
-4 tracks available on Hot Chip's myspace page
-2 more at Palmsout blog
"Hot chip will break your legs, snap off your head."
