British electropoppers Hot Chip are still on the road supporting their fourth album in six years (and a surefire best-of-2010 consideration), One Life Stand. You’ll recognize Joe Goddard [center, in black hat] as the scruffy keyboardist/percussionist normally perched stage left, the bassy counterweight to Alexis Taylor’s tenor vocals. We caught up with Goddard at an undisclosed location and promised to ask him just two open-ended questions, making this either the easiest or the hardest interview of his life.
You’ve been pretty consistent with a release schedule for the band, a new album showing up in the first half of the year every other year since 2004. Do you recognize and need that particular incubation cycle? And with that in mind, do you already have any plans for the content of the next Hot Chip album, or other projects in the interim?
We have a few ideas for the next record and I’m looking forward to making it but we don’t have a clear idea of how exactly its going to sound yet. I don’t think we need a particular length ‘incubation cycle’ but we generally tour a record for about a year and then spend about a year making another one so one comes out roughly every 2 years.
Hot Chip have covered a lot of ground, figuratively and creatively, in the six years since the release of Coming on Strong. Talk about any experiences from your touring that stands out the most in your mind—sights you saw, chance encounters, a city or crowd or fan that you won’t forget.
Playing a roman aqueduct in Aix en Provence in France with LCD Soundsystem in 2004—there were people swimming in the river running under the aqueduct all day and they made delicious Paella for our dinner. Naked man crowdsurfing in Copenhagen. The excellent dancing crowds in Rio and Sao Paolo. Playing the other stage at Glastonbury as the sun sets. The heat of the Sahara tent at Coachella. A cheese eating contest with Diplo in Melbourne. Meeting and watching Neil Young play repeatedly at the Big Day Out in Australia.
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