No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong. Ditch the comedy glasses, the surreal dementia-chic, the daft robotics right this minute. You’re doing yourselves no favours. It’s like seeing a foreign tourist enter second gear and start off down the wrong side of the road. You just want to wave your hands, run along side them and tell them to move it over. On the otherhand, you may just enjoy seeing them crash. And it’s a similar dilemma with Hot Chip. Since releasing their debut album ‘Coming On Strong’ in 2005 with Moshi Moshi this modestly clever South London four-piece have been trafficking in odd, funky, and occasionally inspired electro-pop. A little bit indie, a little bit art-house, their single ‘Over and Over’ sounded like the Simian Mobile Disco mashing up everything from Four Tet, Ladytron, Aha, the Beta Band, Joe 90 and Daft Punk and squeezed in a reference to Thunderbirds whilst they were at it.
Boasting some interesting combinations, some marvellously subtle details and a couple of genuinely pleasing cuts (‘Loook After Me’, ‘The Warning’, ‘So Glad To See You’), Hot Chip have yet to decide whether to pursue the cut-price Art Of Noise production unit comedy routine or develop the beautifully tender, multi-dimensional, Balinese curiosity of sounds they clearly have in abundance. The sooner they accept they have little or no chart potential as an outfit, the sooner they’ll start making all the right noises.