As I noted in yesterday’s blog entry, UK Indie-Dance outfit Hot Chip holds the top spot for most listens out of all the music on my hard drives and hand-held digital listening devices according to the calculations of Last.fm and their Audioscrobbler software. I make no bones about it either; I love the shit out of those dudes. Only my love for of Montreal and Chicago-based emcee Serengeti can come close to matching my love for Joe, Alexis, Al, Owen and Felix, the proprietors of “the Hot Chip sound.”
I’m not the only one who loves them either. In fact, they’ve become pretty damn popular since their first album Coming On Strong. Which is likely the reason I wasn’t able to get a ticket for their last Boston-area concert date. But more-so than selling out shows (or becoming the victim of ticket brokers who make it impossible for your die-hard fans to get a ticket) a measure of popularity can be inferred if your band’s name starts showing up as a point of reference in the press-releases or on the RIYL (recommended if you like) stickers that get stuck to promotional copies of albums by other bands.
This has been happening to Hot Chip more and more of late. And I almost never hear the similarity. But recently I got a press release for a Swiss duo — comprised of Guy Meldem and Christian Pahud — called Larytta which name-checked Hot Chip, and it’s the first time I can say I agree with the comparison. I’d been listening to their debut album, and dropping tracks from it in my playlists, for weeks before reading the press release and noted that many of its songs sounded to me like “what Hot Chip would sound like if they were from Switzerland…” or at least their first two albums after being dipped in Swiss Miss pudding. Okay, that last part might just have popped out because I’m fucking starving over here, but you get the picture.
The point is, I was gonna punch my computer if the people promoting Larytta didn’t compare them and their new album Difficult Fun to Hot Chip! The first things the groups share in common are rambunctiously bouncy, off-kilter digital rhythms, awkwardly angular instrumental edges, a heavy rounded low-end and poly-rhythmic Afro-Latin-inspired percussion accents. Their choice of synthesizer tones and synthetic percussion sounds, use of guitars, and tendency to tweak their already squelchy and squiggly sound into squeaks, squawks, pings, bleeps and glitches are others. And their quirky lyricism, songwriting that draws inspiration from disparate sources from across the Pop music time-line, and multi-part vocal harmonies that exploit multi-tracking and play off the extremes of vocal range seal the deal.
The glitchy New Wave cut “Bauch Amp,” “Ya-Ya-Ya,” an almost Dancehall-esque rave-up, the Post-Punky almostrumental “Money for Pizza” and “Tous Mes Amis,” an electronic Afro-Beat throwdown, are the most obvious “chips” off the ol’ block. Other tunes take additional cues from comparatively old-timey influences, like the slinkily soulful Soft-Rock/Power-Pop on “Wonder Vendor,” sunny ’60s Pop complete with Beach Boys-esque harmonies on “Love Love Odessey,” Bruce Haack-ian vocoder on the otherwise M.I.A.-like electro drum-circle jam “Voodoo Things” and Vangelis/Moroder-ish Europop on “Filthy Jim,” which could easily pass for an out-take from Sébastien Tellier’s Sexuality. The slow, dirty, bass-heavy “Is This Cheese?” splits the difference between Hot Chip and Philly’s Plastic Little with it’s non-rhyming spoken-rap and sung counterpoints. And “The City Walls” flips an entirely different style, with skee-wee-wee synth-leads, gutteral talk-box-warped synth-bass, shimmery keys, stuttery edits and a funky-as-fuck live-sounding bassline constructed from note-chopped samples that recall the Electrofunk of the neon-colored ’80s like only Chromeo usually does.
Lucky for Larytta they’ve got their own lyrical voice and a unique way of pinning scraps of old-school Pop, Soul, Funk, Rock, Punk, New Wave and other styles on to their pattern for thumping electronic beats as decoration and can’t simply be pigeonholed as Hot Chip copycats. I suppose they’re like Hot Chip’s namesake the French Fry, the basic recipe might always stay the same but different restaurants and chefs can still put their own spin on it. So, much like Fench Fry variations such as curly fries, seasoned fries, waffle fries, cheese fries, chili fries and sweet potato fries all taste different, and no two restaurant’s fries are completely alike, Larytta’s music has a flavor all it’s own, even though it’s basic recipe is a tried and true staple.
I told you I was hungry…