There's something odd about Hot Chip. Some fracture between conception and actuality that makes them all the more intriguing. Ostensibly Hot Chip sign up to the HipHop dream as espoused by MTV Cribs and presumably as lived by, ooh, Pharrell Williams? They just seem to have some problems translating it to Wandsworth, SE London, is all.

In fact they seem to have trouble squaring it with the equal, but to some extent opposite, influence of, say, Bill Callahan from Smog. Or Lambchop. Or Crystal Gayle. So, instead of doing the obvious thing and working out what sort of band they are going to be, they conclude that they will be all of them at once. And then they'll make it all in a room smaller than the box room at your Mum's house. With whatever's lying around. That is, whatever's lying around - toy trumpets, kazoos, blah. This to conform to a cherished idea of Brian Wilson's that, in the studio, anything goes.

"Whereas a band like Primal Scream simply want to BE The Rolling Stones for one album, then King Tubby on the next, and Royal Trux on another, we prefer to make references in miniature to the spirit of the records and performances we love and admire," says vocalist/keyboard pla... More Biography