Alexis Taylor - Rubbed Out

Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor recently released a solo album, Rubbed Out, through Treader, who make some of the slickest little packages of music ever. I'm still not sure about how I feel about the album as a whole, but there's some nice little tracks. It's all kinda ephemeral and spacey, and sorta has some Beatles and Elliott Smith sounds, but still with a very Hot Chip tone throughout. Treader's site describes it as a collection of "bespoke songs and instrumentals" which is basically a nice way of saying 'he threw some stuff together.' But when you're responsible for the genius of Hot Chip what you can just throw together is about nine million times better than what anyone else can.

Alexis Taylor - Baby

Hot Little Chip Boots

New artist alert! This fine young English lady goes by the name of Little Boots and has just put out this fine little tune "stuck on repeat" produced by Mr. Joe Goddard of Hot Chip. Her vocals are nice enough but the real star is Joe's bangin production, sounding a little Stuart Price-y which is not a bad thing. Great to hear some side projects coming out of the potent creative minds of Hot Chip. Hopefully more to come soon!

Little Boots - Stuck On Repeat

Chip Appreciation Day

In commemoration of the release of the new hot chip single from the upcoming album "made in the dark", I have put together a little compilation of my favourite hot chip songs and vids of recent. These include an original song featured on their dj kicks cd and great acoustic versions of "hold on" and "boy from school" to showcase the bands diversity and song writing chops.

hot chip - my piano (from the dj kicks album)
hot chip - hold on (live on triple j) watch video here
hot chip - boy from school (acoustic version)

Full-band performance of "over and over" with drumkit... crazy!


Also if you missed the streaming of their recent essential mix you can get it from here (courtesy of pound for pound):

hot chip - radio one essential mix (29.12.07)

Mellon Collie and Infinite Ego

To continue in the cruising vibe of the last few posts I thought I would pop up two tracks I have been chilling too - the first comes from a sweet new Smashing Pumpkins EP titled American Gothic which sees the band exploring their more relaxed side (hence the post title). While it still irks me that there is only two of their original members and Corgan's overdubs are all pervasive their is no denying the quality of this handful of tunes.

Smashing Pumpkins - Sunkissed (from the American Gothic EP)

Hot Chip look set to have another cracking year with the release of their third album - Made in the Dark. I have been lucky enough to wrap my ears around a promo of the new LP and am already tipping it as one of my albums of the year - while it may not have a killer smash in the vein of 'Over and Over' the diversity and slight touches of pop and humor make it an album to watch out for. In the mean time they have been hard at work creating remixes for all sorts, touring Oz twice last year and knocking out a sweet Essential Mix (which can still be streamed here for a limited time). One of the stand out track on said Essential Mix is their reworking of a Matthew Dear track which I can seem to get out of my head. An oldie but a goodie.

Matthew Dear - Don and Sherri (Hot Chip version)

In regards to the picture at the top of this post Mr West was the first person that came up when I googled the word ego. Honest.