You’ve got to love them, don’t you? I mean, it’s impossible not to like a band comprised of such an odd bunch of geeks who somehow make music as cool and as infectious as, say, a snowman with HIV. Hot Chip made a welcome return to Aberdeen, this time as part of the fantastic Tennent’s Mutual scheme – aimed at turning fans into music industry decision-makers.
(Photograph courtesy of Andy Thorn)
After a bizarre warm-up from wonky weirdo one-man-band, Max Tundra, who entertained a slightly bemused crowd with an array of electronic instruments (some you blow into) and the throwing of some pretty alarming shapes, Hot Chip took to the stage.
Opening with the snappy guitar riff of ‘One Pure Thought’ the band looked more like those rappers in the Large Hadron Collider video than a real pop band but frankly fucked with everyone’s heads as they stormed through a set heavy with tracks from recent album, ‘Made In The Dark’.
Stand-out moments included their re-working of ‘Boy From School’ and of course the crowd-pleasers ‘Over And Over’ and ‘Ready For The Floor’.
For a band that perhaps doesn’t offer as much in stage-presence as they do in musical wonderment (but who cares?) there were a few moments of stage-based awe – namely on ‘Hold On’, when singer Alexis Taylor and guitarist Owen Clarke joined in on the percussion for a full on drumming extravanganza.
The band’s dance sensibilities are obvious, as they mixed their own tracks into each other without a break, even managing to combine Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ with their own ‘In The Privacy Of Our Love’ for the closing track.
Nice nerdy noisy nonsense.