Back in April, Hot Chip, one of the UK’s most prolific and consistent synth-pop acts of the last few decades, announced their upcoming 8^th LP Freakout / Release, set to drop on August 18^th. This will be the follow-up to their 2019 output A Bath Full Of Ecstasy, you can find pre-order information here. The band also announced a short residency at Brixton Academy, but if any fans simply can’t survive the next few months waiting, the group have also announced a handful of in-store performances in August to celebrate the album’s release. Hot Chip is a band that has become renowned for never doing things by halves; so have also dropped 3 remixes of their most recent single ‘Down’ by Sworn Virgins, Nyra, and Selector Dub Narcotic, as a companion to the new shows. You can listen to the new tracks below.

As mentioned before, the band’s Brixton Academy residency will take up 4 nights in September, you can search for any remaining tickets here. The new instore dates will come before these gigs; right around the album’s release. The first will be at Kingston’s famous Banquet at PRYZM on August 18^th (that’s right, before the album’s release), closely followed by a night in Brighton at Resident at Chalk on the 19^th (release day, very exciting), before finally concluding back in London at Rough Trade East on the 23^rd. Tickets for all 3 shows can be found here.

Al Doyle, one of the band’s many multi-instrumentalists, explained the album’s inspiration in a press release, “The idea of being out of control is always there in dance music, in a positive sense.” Frontman Alexis Taylor added, “By the time we were able to be back together, we were turning on a tap and having a lot of ideas being poured out quite quickly.” While everyone was commenting on the album, Joe Goddard, again a multi-instrumentalist, also decided to add, “We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways. There’s a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks.”

 In my opinion, Hot Chip have earned their title as one of the UK’s arguably more underrated dance groups. They may not have reached the festival-bill topping heights of a group like Disclosure, but their energy and consistency always lend themselves well to touring and performing. So, in the words of Selector Dub Narcotic, “No matter what the dancefloor, Hot Chip has the answer.”