Hot Chip Interview

HotChip have spent the last 8 years refining their electro pop sound with their fifth studio album, In Our Heads, gaining critical acclaim as their best yet. The band have left record label giant EMI, who released 2006’s The Warning, an album that saw them nominated for the Mercury Prize and was Mixmag’s album of the year. We spoke to Felix Martin (drum machine/synthesizer) about the bands decision to change labels, measuring the bands success and whether he would have chosen instant success at a young age.

With the fifth studio album is it easier to create the songs together?

Our albums seem to come out pretty regularly, one every couple of years, we are onto our fifth album and we kind of pride ourselves on being quite prolific, we don’t really get musically constipated like some other bands who keep trying to make other records and it just doesn’t work out. We are lucky enough that we always have loads of ideas, I’m not saying they are always amazing ideas but we keep moving forward, we just keep trying to add momentum. We create a lot of music so there is no point in hanging around and not putting it out there when it’s ready.

Why the decision to release In Out Heads on Domino rather than EMI?

It was a very natural decision to say we’re friends with them, they really like our music, they wanted to sign us originally years ago and they get who we are and what we want to do. We don’t have to explain to them too much and they won’t try and force a round peg into a square hole, which is maybe what you get slightly with a major label. On the other hand we never really had a problem with EMI and there were some nice people there, they did do a good job. It did change a lot towards the end and it wasn’t really the same company as when we had first signed to them. 

How do you quantify success as a band?

We definitely think about it. From the point of view that we are, partly at least, a pop band, we are definitely aware of whether or not our albums are being listened to by a lot of people and whether our tours are selling out and whether we are still relevant in any way, shape of form. When you’ve made five albums, internally you start trying to justify it. Why do I think it’s necessary for me to keep doing this or would it be better to stop now but we just haven’t really come to that point in terms of creativity and the ideas that we have. You see people’s careers on the up and down, not everyone retires when they are at the peak of their success. A lot of people, the venues are getting smaller and the crowd is diminishing, that’s hard as well but it’s your career so you have to keep plugging away at it I guess. 

How do you balance family life with touring the world and all the DJ gigs?

Well it’s difficult to find a balance but I think we are all quite well grounded people and you know, some people have got kids, families and issues just the same as everyone else has got and are trying to balance work and life. The only difference is that we have to travel a lot, which is quite demanding sometimes. I consider it a lot easier and a more manageable lifestyle than a nurse that’s got to get up at 6am every morning and put in 14-hour shifts or whatever, its certainly a lot less hard than that so I don’t really complain about it too much.

When you go about making a record is there much in the way of planning and pre-production, is it a controlled way of working or fun?

We do go in there and have fun definitely, it’s kind of a mixture really, Joe (Goddard – vocals/synthesizer) and Alexis (Taylor – vocals/synthesizer) will usually have written at least 3 or 4 songs before we really start thinking about making an album. Sometimes they will just appear with a song completely written and other times some of it will be worked out in the studio and inspired by synthesizers or whatever it is.

Do you think musical ability is taught or innate?

I think you can definitely be taught but I think some people have more musicality in there being, they are more co-coordinated. For example Al (Doyle) that plays guitar is just the most musical person I know, he digs out anything whether it’s a musical instrument or an elastic band and he makes it musical by some process of messing around with it and that’s quite a rare thing I think but everyone can learn to play an instrument and learn to play it really well, there is no doubt about that. I am trying to learn to drive at the moment and it’s taking me absolutely ages.

If someone had offered you instant success at a young age, would you have taken that opportunity?

I think it’s definitely much better for us as a group of people for things to have happened the way it did. The only thing is that when you are like 20 years old it’s a lot easier to go out on tour and have a great time and not worry about the responsibilities in your life, so from that point of view it’s good to be successful when you are young. In terms of emotionally and the shape of your life, it’s definitely good to be quite grounded and have had something of a normal life, to have had a job and that kind of thing before you manage to make a bit more of a success out of it. Otherwise I think you can get quite warped from the experience because you are quite detached from normal life. You do lead quite a different existence from a lot of other people so you can end up getting quite estranged from everything.

When you put together a live set is there an element of deconstructing your songs?

Yeah there is as the songs are so multi layered that it’s hard to go about working out how to realise that when you’re playing the music live. There is 7 people on stage and there is lots of instruments, we try to do everything live as much as we can, just because that’s the way that we find sounds best and is the most fun to play. Sometimes you just have to lose something that works on the recording, you want to be a bit more direct when you play things live and other times you want to be quite faithful to how the song sounds when you recorded it. 



Published in Yorkshire Evening Post