Stompin' At The Sav(el)oy

Hello, dear friends, valued strangers and evil spam spewing web-bots, and welcome once more to the David Murphy archives. Here's a review of Top 20 botherers Hot Chip from way before they were famous and the miniature monkey was yet to be wound. They were...quite good. Worth waiting for that verdict, I think you'll agree.

PS Although the BBC editor at the time published this claiming it was a gig at The Bully, this was incorrect. Also, I'm sure I originally indicated in thge copy who promoted the gig, and I think it may have been Vacuous Pop, but I'm not certain enough after all these years to say for certain.

HOT CHIP/ PINEY GIR/ NERVOUS_TESTPILOT, Wheatsheaf, 8/04

Anyone who says electronic music is always the same has got nervous_testpilot to answer to. Not that this would be too frightening as the pilot is quite small and, err, nervous, but the point is that Paul Taylor has the itelligence and musical imagination to make every performance completely different, in a way no supposedly exciting rock band could dream of.

After the tympanic scouring doled out at Truck, tonight he's gone for the danceably melodic. God, give some of those tunes a remix by Fatboy or Sash! and they'd be Top 10 material! Highlights are a crisp "Raiders Of The Lost ARP" and his trademark Queen-mangling gabba finale - OK, it's obvious, but it's so damned well done.

Speaking of doing things well, let us consider Exhibit B, Piney Gir. In lesser hands her kindergarten Korg schtick might wear thin, but underneath the playground melodies reclines a vocalist of great ability and discipline. Add to this A Scholar & A Physician's incisive and elegant production, whicc resists the urge to be too silly (except on a punk "My Genreration" cover, which palls on the second hearing), and everything in Camp Gir looks rosy. Having said this, I can imagine many people being left cold by tonight's textbook performance. I just can't imagine it would be much fun being them.

I'm uncertain about Hot Chip. They look like a mixture of The Beastie Boy's younger brothers and Cabaret Voltaire's chemistry teachers, and they sound like The Bloodhound Gang playing Prince's songs on Chicory Tip's keyboards. Their fiveman wall of electronic funk resembles a Benny Hill sketch about electro.

Trouble is, their suburban sleaze entreaties are sometimes full of wit, and sometimes and overstretched joke; some of the parping synth textures are clever and outrageously funky, whilst some are thin and annoying. Still, I'll be there to watch them next time, and I suppose any performance that leaves an old cynic like me so intrigued must be counted as a victory.