On August 19th, Hot Chip will be out with their eight studio album, Freakout/Release. As their prolific career has gone on, the UK electro-pop quintet have delved deeper into an exploration of disco and dance music forms from decades past. The album’s lead single, “Down,” saw them digging into ’60s soul grooves, while “Eleanor” felt like a reflection of the electro sounded that is uniquely theirs. Now on the album’s title track, the band have crafted an electro-disco jam with an industrial groove.
“I need an escape and some primitive healing,” Alex Taylor sings. The robotic effects feel forged in ’80s nostalgia, but there is something decidedly dark and bottled in within “Freakout/Release,” that gets, well… released.
In a statement, Taylor says producer Joe Goddard was inspired by a certain song from The White Stripes: “‘Freakout/Release’ is about pent-up energy and the need for release, and escape. It’s also about making sense of music, and at times being plagued by the thing you focus on — music never leaves my head for a second, which is usually a good feeling, but it can feel claustrophobic at times too. It’s also about finding your place in relation to music and to performing. The riff should feel brutal and dumb and elemental and Joe was thinking about ‘Seven Nation Army’ and the simplicity of that swinging from quiet to loud and back and forth.”
Watch the lyrics video for “Freakout/Release” above.
Freakout/Release is out 8/19 via Domino Records. Pre-order it here.
