Made in the Dark (new Hot Chip)

Hot Chip Live at Bonnaroo last year (photo: wikipedia commons)

DJ Kicks: Hot Chip

London-based electro-pop purveyors and shiny dance floor nerd funk hipsters Hot Chip are about to drop their new album. Made In the Dark will be released by Astralwerks / DFA in the U.S. on February 5th, and on February 4th by EMI in the U.K. The new album follows hot on the heels of Hot Chip's DJ Kicks mixtape release for the K7 series over the summer -- not to mention about a gazillion remix projects over the past year featuring everyone from Kraftwerk to Tracey Thorn, !!! to CSS, and Omaha's Tilly and the Wall to the Elysian String Quartet's performance of Prokofiev's "String Quartet No. 2" (!)

Hot Chip: Made in the Dark
Made in the Dark is, of course, ready for the dance floor. The album's first single, "Shake a Fist," was released last year, and the second single, "Ready for the Floor," will be released on January 28th as an enhanced CD single with the video (see below), a SoulWax remix, and a Diplo remix of "Shake a Fist. " "Ready for the Floor" is driven by a fantastic, elastic-bounce bass line. In addition to drawing off early-80s electro-pop (think Soft Cell and OMD crossed with the Buggles), the track features a chorus that sounds like something Jeff Lynne would've written for an ELO pop song. Check the video, which features Alexis Taylor as a two-faced combination of Batman villains the Joker and Two Face playing around in Thomas Dolby's lab (with lots of technicolor and cans of paint):





The promo-material for Made in the Dark notes that "the band's sound has evolved towards a wilder, heavier electronics, though still coupled with a signature pop aesthetic," keeping "pure, unadulterated head rush pop into the mix."

But, along with the dance floor grooves, the album's title track is a ballad. And a reflective, somewhat melancholy, break-up ballad at that. It's, uh, pretty. It's slow. It takes its time with an extremely downtempo, boom-boom-bip beat.

And it's been made available for posting and free downloading:

Made In The Dark -- Hot Chip: Made In The Dark (2008)

Hot Chip kick-off the release of Made in the Dark with special shows in New York and LA next month, followed by dates in the UK. The band comes back to the US in April with gigs in Philly (4/10), DC (4/11), New York (4/12), Boston (4/14), and Chicago (4/17), among others. See the band's myspace page for complete listings.

Preorder Made in the Dark from Insound in the US, and Recordstore in the UK. Release date: February 4th (UK), February 5th (US).

p.s. "You're my Number One Guy."
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