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NBHAP Rating: 3,8/5
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[one_half last=”yes”]HOT CHIP
Why Make Sense?
Release-Date: 18.05.2015
Label: Domino Records
Tracklist:
01. Huarache Lights
02. Love is the Future
03. Cry For You
04. Started Right
05. White Wine and Fried Chicken
06. Dark Night
07. Easy to Get
08. Need You Now
09. So Much Further to Go
10. Why Make Sense?
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Back to the roots or not?
It seems like on their seventh record Why Make Sense? Britains famous electro-synth-pop group HOT CHIP can’t decide whether to get back to their musical roots or try out something new. The ten tracks are actually what you’ve expected from a new HOT CHIP album : catchy dancefloor pieces with glimmering electro elements. But there is something that differs the album from the band’s former works: it’s the way the LP was recorded. For the first time, the British guys sat together in a studio to rehearse and record the album. Very untypical for today’s electro formations but definetely a fact that has a good influence on Why Make Sense? – the album appears to be more coherent than some of HOT CHIP‘s former records, isn’t overloaded with unnecessary electro sounds like some other bands like to do these days and is in any case much closer to the sound the group creates on stage, like drummer Joe Goddard confirms on their artist-side at Domino: “Musically we all had a desire to strip things right down, not overload it with parts. It relates back to the idea of actually being a band – maybe just one guitar part and one live drum part rather than multiple layers added. Musically, it was an effort to bring a real directness to our music, the kind you’d get on old RnB records… Hopefully stripping things back brings more funk to the tracks.”
Funky R’n’B spirit
There is a certain funky R’n’B attitude which draws it’s way through the whole album. From the catchy Love Is The Future with De La Soul’s rap part to emotional Need You Know which builds itself around a sample from the 1983 SINNAMAN single- you can find these elements everywhere. Need You Know can also be seen as the albums key track and differs to anything singer ALEXIS TAYLOR has ever written yet: “Need You Now’ is a bit different to anything I’ve previously written about – it’s about the bleak reality of living in a world where terrorism exists in such a visible way. The track isn’t trying to solve anything, it’s just a recognition of the fact that it’s there and we’re helpless against it. Hot Chip songs are usually about relationships – either my own or my relationship to the music we make… ‘Need You Now’ comes from a more pessimistic place. It’s an attempt to condense down that sense of helplessness you get watching the news.”
Why make sense?
That’s the big question the album poses but can’t really answer. It’s a question which can’t be answered, only be reflected. And that’s what the record does – reflecting the future (Huarache Lights), the own state of mind (Need You Know) or the whole life (Why Make Sense?). A fact wich proves that HOT CHIP don’t only make music but rather create elaborated and ambitious sounds with a special message behind.
On Why Make Sense? British group HOT CHIP show that they haven’t forgotten how to make sophisticated dance music.
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