HOT CHIP

‘A Long Way From Kansas’, Hot Chip’s new album, reveals the band at their most raw. Paraphrasing *The Wizard of Oz*, the title refers to Dorothy, her dog and the distance they had to travel to get home and regain some semblance of normality. The world seems to be spinning ever faster, its story becoming increasingly difficult to decipher. Deaths, senseless wars, the climate catastrophe ravaging the seasons. Reacting to all this gloom, and echoing it through distortion and decadence, the band’s ninth album finds its own way of celebrating life even as, all around it, boundaries go up in flames.

The visionary electronic band Hot Chip formed in 2000, whilst each member was basking in the glow of the new millennium. Over the days, months and years that followed, Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin channelled love and harmony through their art, creating a body of work spanning eight albums that blends mind, heart and body. Yet when they arrived at Joe and Al’s studio, ‘Relax and Enjoy’, in east London, earlier this year to record their new album, *A Long Way From Kansas*, the band members felt they had to confront the events unfolding before their eyes and these nagging questions.

Alexis Taylor: “*A Long Way From Kansas*” reflects the general feeling that the world we live in — the one in which we recorded our album — is particularly harsh, discordant, violent and depressing. None of this is perhaps anything new, and it doesn’t mean that every song is about the world, politics or genocide, but it was an inescapable backdrop whilst we were making this album. We explore a certain darkness in it; it’s our way of saying: ‘Listen, we know we’re in a rather bleak situation.’”

Presented by: Super! (L-R-24-1347//L-R-24-1346)