Crikey, we could bang on all day about what makes the ultimate mix-album. Should it recreate a live dance club experience? Should it provide a banner under which to unite a multi-tiered mesh of moods and/or concepts? Should it provide a seamless spirit of sound? Should it in some way reveal a little bit more about the artist themselves? Tosh. What the hell does it really matter? When you, me, Hot Chip or even my great Aunt Maud compiles a tape of stuff to bang out on a box marked ‘Various’ it usually amounts to one thing only: the whims of one particular individual, in one particular mindset, at one particular point in time to grab all their favourite tracks and squeeze them all together on one handy mix-tape with as few gaps between songs as humanly possible. That way you can even get the one’s you don’t really like on: the ones that’ll lend it credibility on the off chance you lend it out to people with more discerning taste than yourself. Only some people’s mixtapes consist only of tracks of this ilk. Bit like buying birthday cards in that respect: they’re likely to say far more about how you want to be seen by people, than they do about the person you’re giving it to. So it’s all a bit of a hall-of-mirrors hand-job in the end. Without any bother.
Eclectic? Perhaps. Certainly full of stuff that defies expectations. But that doesn’t mean it’s clever. Had a girlfriend once that compiled a tape of really cool and alternative indie and electronica and – thinking it her piece de resistance – she stuck on the end ‘Sleeping Satellite’ by Tasmin Archer and a couple of tracks from Ant and Dec. So ‘unexpected’ and ‘eclectic’ don’t necessarily mean ‘good’, if you know what I mean.
On the otherhand, Hot Chip’s DJ Kicks is rather satisfying. In fact it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a group of rather bland looking computer nerds who think disproportionately large glasses and brightly coloured jumpsuits hold the key to genius. So first up we have strict 80’s Radio 2 fodder like ‘Nitemoves’ from Grosvenor (composed and set-to’d by Hot Chip sticksman Rob Smoughton). Twitchy, jerky, yes, but also with a rippling smooth underside. Then there’s hip-hop old and new (Postive K’s “I Got A Man,” Young Leek’s “Jiggle It”), juke joint R&B (Etta James & Sugar Pie DeSanto’s “In The Basement, Part One”), classic electro-pop (Shep Pettibone’s much-loved remix of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”), Brazilian (Tom Zé’s “Cademar”), punk funk (Gramme’s “Like You”), post-punk heroes (This Heat’s “Radio Prague”), minimal techno (cuts from Audion, Dominik Eulberg, and Marek Bois, to name a few), and all topped off with Joe Jackson’s thoroughly unoffensive, ‘Steppin Out’ – thrown in with or without irony (although I’m tempted to go with ‘without irony’ given the drippy nature of the band themselves).
Only missing a Shep Pettibone remix of Tasmin Archer’s ‘Sleeping Satellite’ in my view.