London's Hot Chip is two bands in one. On one hand, Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor write and record most of Hot Chip's music, creating songs that work with the elements of electronic club music, adapting house, garage, techno, or hip-hop beats. Their music crosses heart-on-the-sleeve emotions with ready-for-the-dance-floor exuberance.
But Hot Chip is not a duo. It has been a five-piece band for a dozen years, and for the tour that comes to the Electric Factory Saturday night, it has grown to a septet.
"It's an odd band to describe: It's two people in a duo, and it's kind of five people as well," says Taylor, on the phone from his home in London. "If we were starting the band right now and it was just me and Joe, it's possible that we might have ended up like other duos, where they just have laptops and a bit of keyboards and stuff is running in a loop and it's a bit less live-sounding. Right from the beginning as a band, we tried to translate what we were doing in the music studio, or in the bedroom studio, to something much more visceral-sounding live on stage."
