Hot Chip - Made in the Dark Print
Archived - Archived Electronica & Hip Hop Albums
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The eagerly awaited new album of Hot Chip, “Made in the Dark”, does not fail to impress.

Despite the fact, in general, electronic music is going through a particularly uncreative time, the group Hot Chip have successfully produced a collection of tunes that is exactly the cure that any Monday morning commuter requires before heading into work.  Or indeed just the ingredient needed on a Friday night before heading out.

The first track, “Out at the Pictures”, is the perfect start to a thumping album.  Raw and layered like red onion, this is a song that is stylistically similar to the Scissor Sisters.  However, in my view at least, this song is infinitely more appealing and leaves the Scissor Sisters in its wake.  Without doubt, however, it is “Ready for the Floor” which is the stand-out track of the album, definitely single-material.  It is mixed up like a good cocktail, and features catchy female vocals. This is pop at its best, and is indication of the eclectic style of this band.

Hot Chip are as impressive when they are blasting out a prospective top-ten chart buster as when they are striving to do something a little more underground, such as “Don‘t Dance”.  This is a track that, in its middle-part at least, takes me back to the dance anthems of the late 1990s and early 2000s.  If played in a club in the early morning, this is the type of classic that is sure to even wake the drunk that has fallen asleep on a lounge next to the dance floor.

It is clear that Hot Chip have many influences, and it is the diversity of their song-making that is particularly appealing. Jumping from jazzy blues to electronic rock to plastic pop to dance music, Hot Chip appear to be avoiding being stereotyped into only one music genre.  Which is music to the ears of all their fans.

7.5/10