Hot Chip announce Best Of album 'Joy In Repetition' for Sept + London show

Hot Chip announce a Best Of album, Joy In Repetition will be released September 5th
Includes tracks across seven albums + new song “Devotion”
Watch the video for “Devotion” HERE
Confirm live dates in London, NYC and LA

More than two decades and eight studio albums in, Hot Chip remain as vital as ever: playful, profound and perpetually locked in the groove. Today, they announce their first Best Of album, Joy In Repetition will be released on September 5th. Mapping out an artistic evolution from DIY beginnings into “the greatest British pop group of their generation” (The Guardian) with six Top 20 albums, a Mercury Music Prize nomination, sell-out residencies at London’s Brixton Academy and list of collaborators that includes David Byrne, Jarvis Cocker, Robert Wyatt and Brian Eno.
 
Joy In Repetition is a collection shaped by dancefloors, bedroom studios, festival stages and friendship. The record’s title – alluding to both the lyrics of their career-defining track and one of Alexis Taylor’s favourite Prince songs – captures something elemental about the band: a fascination with rhythm, but also the exuberant act of making those things, together, over and over and over and over and over. In another nod to “Over and Over”, the album’s artwork by the legendary Sir Peter Blake features a painted monkey with a miniature cymbal.
 
Following Coming On Strongerer, last year’s 20th anniversary reissue, Joy In Repetition picks up where their 2004 debut left off, with Taylor, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin as a fully realised group. Joy In Repetition covers the whole emotional experience of a Hot Chip album, from the stone-cold bangers of “Ready For The Floor”, “I Feel Better”, “Flutes” and “Over and Over" to their more melancholic and tender moments found on the likes of “Boy From School”, “Look At Where We Are” and “Melody of Love” – the anthology also features a brand-new song “Devotion”.  
 
Repetition is more than a compositional tool for Hot Chip; it’s a philosophy. “There’s joy in doing something again and again,” says Taylor. “That’s true of rhythms, of grooves and of making records together for 20 years. We’re still doing it. We still love doing it.” There have been numerous side projects over the years and parallel careers, notably Al Doyle joining LCD Soundsystem in 2005, but Hot Chip always return to each other. It’s a sentiment encapsulated by new song “Devotion” which closes the compilation. A buoyant whirl of psych-pop that calls to mind The Beach Boys sipping Piña Coladas with Hall & Oates and asks for a rock in uncertain times, the song is “a celebration of the devotion to doing this project together,” Taylor continues, as well as their devotion to their craft. “I think of Joe as being like Brian Wilson, with this huge dedication to finding how to make the most amazing pop music,” he adds.
 
Watch the video for “Devotion” here.
Stream “Devotion” here.

The video, directed by Will Kindrick and filmed in Japan, takes devotion to one’s craft down a different tangent. Kindrick says: “I’ve spent a lot of time shooting in Japan recently, and have become obsessed with keibiin (Japanese security guards). I was waiting for a train and noticed a stoic security guard standing on the platform, his arm extended, robotically waving what looked like a lightsabre, and the most hyper-focused stare I’ve ever seen in my life. There was nothing behind those eyes but pure devotion to his craft. I started thinking about these humble heroes hitting the streets every morning—rain or shine—guiding us through traffic, telling us where to park, protecting us from obliviously stepping into active construction zones. What about the individual underneath the helmet? This video is me pouring one out on the curb for the devoted, hard-working keibiin everywhere!”
 
Though they’d bristle at the weighty notion of their ‘legacy’, the band have been delicately contemplating the “essence of Hot Chip” of late. Are they festival favourites doing it for the misfits? Outsiders who’ve burrowed their own lane between indie, dance and pop? A band on a mission to find humanity in the machinery? Or one whose longevity, as Pitchfork once wrote, “is proof positive that you can build a band around the concept of ‘emotional intelligence’?”
 
All of the above. Joy In Repetition isn’t only a retrospective, it’s a document of Hot Chip’s commitment to joy, curiosity and each other. “It’s strange, you can’t go back to the feeling of those early days,” says Clarke. “But there’s something comforting about that. These records hold those memories for us. And it’s the shared experience that connects it all.”
 
Hot Chip will celebrate the release of Joy In Repetition with a show at London’s Troxy on September 5th. 

Album artwork by Peter Blake

Tracklisting:

1. Ready For The Floor 

2. Boy From School 

3. One Life Stand

4. Night And Day

5. Flutes

6. Hungry Child

7. Over And Over

8. Positive

9. Look At Where We Are

10. Need You Now

11. Eleanor

12. Huarache Lights

13. Melody of LoveI 

14. Feel Better

15. Devotion

Upcoming live dates

September 5th – Troxy, London
September 7th – Webster Hall, NYC
September 9th – The Fonda Theater, Los Angeles
 
Joy In Repetition is available to pre-order on DomMart-exclusive clear coloured vinyl (with stickers, replica ticket stub and link to exclusive archive live footage), indies-exclusive white coloured vinyl, standard vinyl, CD and digitally. Pre-order: DomMart | Digital
 
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