There might not be a more consistent electro-pop band out there than Hot Chip. With seven vibrant albums, each of which bears its own unique energy, under their belt, the British band are proof that you don’t have to water down your sound to keep making rock and pop music that’s ready for the dance floor. Today, the wonderful quintet, who just played an evening set at Coachella, announced their eighth album, Freakout/Release, and it sees the band exploring heavier themes that speak to the wild times we’re still in.
“We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways,” beat maestro Joe Goddard said in a statement about the album, which comes out on August 19th. “There’s a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks.”
The album was recorded at Hot Chip’s new Relax & Enjoy Studio, which they established early on in the pandemic. It proved to be a welcome creative ground for them to come together to work on the songs from Freakout/Release.
“We were turning on a tap and having a lot of ideas being poured out quite quickly,” singer Alexis Taylor said.
While multi-instrumentalist Al Doyle (who is also the guitarist for LCD Soundsystem) adds, “Everything’s on all the time [at Relax & Enjoy] and it’s very easy to capture what we’re doing.”
Hot Chip also released the album’s lead single in “Down.” It rides on a sample of “More Than Enough” by Universal Togetherness Band and speaks to Goddard’s supreme dance music crate digging chops (seriously, go see a Hot Chip DJ set some day, it’s a transcendental masterclass in dance music history). The band are in the midst of their North American tour and songs from the new album are sure to pop up on stage.
In the meantime, watch the video for “Down” above, directed by Douglas Hart and Steve Mackey, with well-woven hat tips to The Shining. Check out the album artwork and tracklist for Freakout/Release below.
1. “Down”
2. “Eleanor”
3. “Freakout/Release”
4. “Broken”
5. “Not Alone”
6. “Hard To Be Funky” Feat. Lou Hayter
7. “Time”
8. “Miss The Blues”
9. “The Evil That Men Do” Feat. Cadence Weapon
10. “Guilty”
11. “Out Of My Depth”
Freakout/Release is out 8/19 via Domino Recordings. Pre-order it here.
