ALEXIS TAYLOR OF HOT CHIP

Five hours drive from London lies the rolling hills of Cornwall. Set amongst the picturesque countryside in Redruth, Scorrier House becomes the backdrop for an epic day of music.

The moment an act arrives on the scene is never quite a burst and sudden existence but rather a slow burn and gradual development that involves incremental steps. That is true of most artists and as Alexis Taylor of seminal U.K. outfit Hot Chip explains, it was a culmination of events that led to the emergence of Hot Chip. “We broke into the music scene with some quite lo-fi bedroom recorded music via a nice review in the NME and some sparsely attended gigs for which we hadn’t done adequate rehearsal. But I think we made our own sound, for better or for worse!”.

In those early days, it was a unique blend of stylistic points that Hot Chip were exploring and seeking to expand upon. As Taylor elaborates, “Mixing together influences from Timbaland, Destiny’s Child, UK garage, Will Oldham, Ween, Devo and Antipop Consortium, we were sort of out on a limb.” It was this cocktail of influences and genres that amalgamated what they were hearing at the time but also what they weren’t hearing. Humbly recalling those early shows Taylor remembers the simplicity of it all and the signature style they were championing. “What was most striking was as that we only needed 5 DIs for our instruments at gigs, no amps, no drum kit etc. We must have seemed quite odd to have only keyboards and a drum machine.” Only adding to the challenge of creating and sharing their emerging music was the brackish musical period between traditional formats, the hard copy approach, and the fluid, global streaming of modern music.

Experiencing both sides of the musical divide, Taylor speaks of his own encounter with the music industry at the time and how rapidly it was evolving between labels, streaming, consumer uptake, and technological advances. “It was mainly a time of compact discs and CDRs and major labels vs independent labels. Naptser and file sharing was pretty new. There wasn’t streaming as such yet. Our experiences were good on the whole. Stephen Bass and Michael McClatchey ran a small label called Moshi Moshi which signed us for our first album and they were very supportive and creative with limited funding. They helped us get lots of remixes which paid for us to be able to do shows and small tours. DFA and EMI came next and also were very supportive but on a much bigger scale.” Despite the uptick in exposure and distribution, the fundamentals remained the same. Especially so when considering how Hot Chip set about crafting their own signature sound as Taylor confesses. “We didn’t have many instruments at the start and just used what we had access to. Combining such things probably made for a fairly unique sound. I think the instrumentation has changed mostly from record to record but it’s always involved synthesizers, electric pianos, guitar, percussion, and programmed drums and using Cubase to craft and manipulate the sounds.” Harnessing the instrumentation in the way they have, Hot Chip carved out their distinctive style but merging sound with meaning, their methodology towards writing was a little more rustic.

Fusing the topics they enjoy canvasing the most with the music they make is a free-form approach as Taylor simply states when describing how they approach lyricism. “Just to try stuff out really. Be bold and try singing about what you’re feeling or whatever you have on your mind and not thinking it needs to “fit” too perfectly. Leave room for being human and for things to sit alongside other things, even if they seem at odds at first.” Taking concepts, refining them, and laying them down on tape is one thing but translating that into a live show is another thing altogether. The considerations Hot Chip takes into account when thinking about performing their work live and unleashing what was bottled in the studio onto a live audience is of primary importance. “We tend to try to put as much energy into the live shows as possible and it’s an entirely different beast on stage I would say. The studio is a place to craft things and live things have to be more raw or robust on the whole.” Having played countless shows over the years, Taylor shares some particularly special performances and why they were so personally memorable. “The one where Joe and Owen overslept at Lovebox festival was memorable. The gig we played with Chaka Khan in New York was also memorable, as we seemed to be in different keys from each other and various things broke and people walked off stage midway through. It was like a nightmare. In a more positive way, playing with a huge steel band at Glastonbury was very memorable and euphoric.” Tempering the good with the bad, each performance adds a little something to the collective experience and pursuit to play another. Case in point, their next summer festival performance of 2023 is set for Live at Scorrier House, in the picturesque countryside of Cornwall.

There is a real electronica continuum on the bill as it includes the pioneering sounds of the late 80’s outfit 808 State, the seminal influence throughout the 90’s and 00's of Leftfield, and of course Hot Chip with their own highly inventive works from the past two decades. Asked as to whether refractions of these artists have shaped their own work, Taylor affirms “I don’t think we have directly taken inspiration from them as we came at our “electronic music” from a different angle initially but then probably have crossed over into a similar area as them over time as we explored more acid and techno influences rather than the more R n B and lo-fi stuff we liked right at the start.”

Acknowledging the role they have played in the music scene and each in their respective fields and sub-genres, Taylor enthusiastically declares, “They’re both very influential and important bands in their own ways, and it’s an honour to play on the same festival them.” The performance will undoubtedly provide new experiences and tales to tell, as plenty of previous shows have done. Taylor recalls two certain instances where events occurred, and conversations echoed long after the words were first uttered. “Bernard Sumner was VERY particular about what his tea should look like and told a story about New Order essentially falling apart due to the way people ate their crisps. Some words of warning in there I guess. Philippe Zdar inspired us to enjoy playing simultaneously and to try to make our audience (in the studio, ie him) dance to the music - we knew it was going well if he started dancing. He also told us each song on an album needs a fellow song, a sibling, or a brother or sister track. To group songs together in this way so the album works better as a whole.” Industry insiders and memorable events aside, the impact of music on Taylor, its legacy, and his connection to it is best summarised by the man himself. Describing what music gives him that nothing else does, he goes on to say. “It can lift my mood massively, inspire me, make me feel very alive, make me moved to tears, propose intellectual ideas, lead political change, and it can bring you together with strangers either in the crowd in the moment of performing, or with other musicians in a room. For me, it is the most important thing in my life other than love, family, and friendship.” Understanding that there are two sides to a coin, Taylor understands that it isn’t always enjoyable. “Of course, it can also be infuriating and unavoidable (music you’re exposed to that you don’t like, for instance, sometimes continually going round your head) - so it’s not automatically all of the above all of the time.” Yet at the end of the day and philosophically speaking, “Music is this other language beyond something exclusively verbal, and it seems to say things which cannot be said in words alone, and so for me, it acts like a sort of metaphorical language - music is its own symbolism for something else that is hard to articulate.” What isn’t hard to understand however is the pioneering and constantly inventive work that Hot Chip has created and continues to produce. Continuing to release work and constantly adding to their substantial back catalogue, their sphere of influence and magnitude of it may not be expressly felt by Taylor and the band but as Taylor admits. “The idea of having some influence or being inspirational is a very nice one, as I know how influential others have been for us.” A modest and honest assessment of their continuing contribution to the U.K. and global music scenes.