Hot Chip have released “Freakout/Release“, the third track from their upcoming album of the same name, out August 19th. The title track hits different to the previously shared singles “Eleanor” and “Down”, complete with distorted vocoders, crunchy guitars and pounding percussion to harness that irreplicable live energy.
Talking about the song, Alexis Taylor says, “Freakout/Release is about pent-up energy and the need for release, and escape. It’s also about making sense of music, and at times being plagued by the thing you focus on – music never leaves my head for a second, which is usually a good feeling, but it can feel claustrophobic at times too. It’s also about finding your place in relation to music and to performing. The riff should feel brutal and dumb and elemental and Joe was thinking about Seven Nation Army and the simplicity of that swinging from quiet to loud and back and forth.”
Freakout/Release is another dizzying high in a multi-decade career that’s seen Hot Chip continuing to innovate and develop a rich, resonant songcraft. Written and recorded in the band’s newly minted Relax & Enjoy studio in East London, a creative space that Al Doyle began building from 2019. Coalescing in the Relax & Enjoy studio was essential in establishing the album’s lively, full-band sound and marks the first time Hot Chip began work on a new record all together as well as reuniting them in the same room for the first time following their touring behind 2019’s A Bath Full Of Ecstasy.
Lyrically, Freakout/Release explores darker emotions than previous Hot Chip albums have, drawing from the personal and the political to chart the ways people survive even amidst immovable struggles. “We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways,” Goddard explains. “There’s a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks.”
Over the last 18 years, Hot Chip have established themselves among similar British luminaries like Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode—a true gap-bridging between the worlds of pop and dance music, with a catalogue of songs that move bodies and touch hearts with equal impact.
Upcoming live dates
August 5th – Junction 1 Summer Series, Glasgow
August 18th – Banquet @ PRYZM, Kingston
August 19th – Resident @ Chalk, Brighton
August 23rd – Rough Trade East, London (DJ set)
September 2nd – Cala Mijas Festival, Malaga
September 21st – o2 Academy Brixton, London
September 22nd – o2 Academy Brixton, London
September 23rd – o2 Academy Brixton, London
September 24th – o2 Academy Brixton, London
October 1st – Tempodrom, Berlin
October 2nd – Live Music Hall, Cologne
October 3rd – AB Ballroom, Brussels
October 5th – Tivoli Ronda, Utrecht
October 8th – Olympia, Paris
Tickets