Hot Chip takes dip into dance music

The guys in Hot Chip don't care much for musical convention. Instead, their sound is sinewy, almost elastic suites of modern dance music. That visionary, almost maverick, outlook has been something that Hot Chip has perfected in its last two albums.

Their past work has enabled them to develop a sound that is an aural mosaic that combines a thick, ominous wall of thuds juxtaposed against spacey fizzes of vocals and melodies that become an infectious dance music.

Their latest, "Made in the Dark" (Astralwerks), is anything but an ordinary song and dance.

With wide-screen sound and heavy duty beats that drive such rave-ups as "Shake a Fist" and "Ready for the Floor," the take-no-prisoners attitude of the band is well-executed in bass-heavy concoctions dressed up with wide-eyed vocals that work perfectly to create convincing, if wall-rattling, results.

Hot Chip's experimental attitude is obvious, and that spirit is echoed in the choice of samples on the record's 13 tracks. The voice of fellow innovator Todd Rundgren invites listeners to keep their ears peeled for "sounds of the studio" on one sample. The track, originally on Rundgren's "Something/Anything" album, is the band's telling paean to their mission of balancing bold musical experimentation with inescapable melodies.

The uncharacteristically slower songs, especially "We're Looking for a Lot of Love" and the title track, showcase surprising vulnerability and tunefulness that make the tracks sound like lost McCartney outtakes that have been run through a blender.

Hot Chip's musical recipe is equal parts Jesus and Mary Chain, Front 242 and Gene Loves Jezebel. This is '80s club music filtered through a '90s cynicism with the end result being a rather avant-garde expressionist painting of sound, with colors and flourishes that don't always stay within the boundaries of its frame.

'Disco' in style

Leisure suits and platform shoes may never make a comeback (let's hope), but the music on "The Disco Box" (Rhino) defies fashion and has managed to stay in style.

Some call them eight-track flashbacks from a bygone polyester daze, but the songs that make up this tasty, four-disc collection run the gamut, including one-hit wonders (Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell"), songs that defined the genre ("Good Times" from Chic) and legendary voices that hopped on the disco bandwagon (The Miracles' "Love Machine").

The breadth of the song selection is only more impressive because of the hit factor of all of the tracks. Rather than club-only filler, the titles on this set were all bona-fide Top 40 entries. The songs we shook our collective booty to were also the ones we heard on the radio, and all those memories are here.

Gold chains and silk shirts notwithstanding, it was a simpler, happier time that "The Disco Box" expertly and shamelessly invokes.


Made in the Dark (Astralwerks) by Hot Chip TWO STARS

The Disco Box (Rhino) FOUR STARS


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