Modern Masterworks #1 - Hot Chip "In Our Heads" Review

Relationships are tempestuous. In the space of days, (sometimes hours) the exuberance of a love you thought would last a lifetime, can be destroyed in an instant. Whether it’s your fault or theirs, (at the time it’s always theirs) you’ll end up secretly wishing that your ex-love would go and play ‘tag’ with onrushing traffic. As the days pass and loneliness sets in, you spiral into a self-destructive melancholy, where ‘letting go’ is not an option because deep down you’re still in love. Such emotion turmoil has been the inspiration for music (and soap opera plot lines) for countless years and is a theme spit chronologically along the 11 tracks of Hot Chip’s fifth studio LP, In Our Heads.

Nothing’s Making Sense In My Brain

Hot Chip - Flutes

Alexis Taylor’s voice has consistently been an under utilised weapon in the Hot Chip arsenal. The cool detachment and lonely quality of his delivery is often at odds with the bands uptempo songs, requiring extensive tailoring before the musical fit becomes perfect. On their new track, “Flutes,” Taylor and the rest of Hot Chip have finally found the confidence to build a dance floor hit around his tonal qualities.

The 7 minute track builds its foundation upon a masterful use of repetition and layered sound, which represent more than just a set of highly danceable textures. From the outset, the tracks indecipherable yet rhythmic chanting symbolises a mind searching for a higher meaning and answers to the fear inducing, existential questions that can never be resolved. A set of neurotic half thoughts, where you lose faith in lovers, in friends or worse still, life as a whole. Where each layer of throbbing synth and samples begins to hypnotise and encircle the listener with these worries, eventually forcing an acknowledgement that some things are out of your hands.

It’s as if Taylor and co have figured out how to apply Derren Brown’s, neuro linguistic programming to dance music. Where the beats provide the a consistent backdrop as the lyrics alter your thought patterns, until a moment of critical mass is reached and you just let all your worries go. The resulting emotional release hits with a physicality that the loudest Skrillex bass line could only dream of. Leaving behind a feeling of empowerment and a realisation, that even though the beat of life's fears will always be the same, the way in which you dance is entirely up to you.

“Flutes” is taken from Hot Chips fifth album, In Our Heads, which drops into UK stores on June, 11.