After their DJ performance at Ambar the previous night, the five gentlemen who make up Hot Chip performed a live set to a sellout audience at the Artrage Bakery last Friday night.
With Okioki as support, a tight crowd formed between the stage and the bar with everyone getting into viewing position for Hot Chip. As the massive cluster of people encompassed the bar Okioki performed their well known kid-pop keyboard driven tune Pocayo vs TIM. Okioki’s sounds are comical and humoristic like a child’s music genre, but in a cool way to entertain mature minded people dressing in eighties/nineties fashion and are certainly a suitable band to work up a crowd for another electro/new wave act such as Hot Chip. While most of the Keyboard riffing from Oki Oki sounds similar, two tracks that get the most play at their shows, Hot Air Balloon Ride and Sneaker Step Dance Sneaker Step Dance, become recognisable to a tuned-in audience what was enjoying their music whether they had heard it before it or not.
After Okioki left the stage, the intermission in between sets was filled with sounds to please indie-electro fans such as Digitalism and MIA. When the room goes dark and cheering starts its safe to assume that the main act of the night has stepped on stage.
The arrangement Hot Chip formed on the stage was quite expansive with all five members crowding the front of the performance area. Still, each one is interesting to watch as they are completely absorbed in what they are doing. At certain times in the set the two synthesiser users completely absorbed in their music danced more than any member of the audience and, in an unorthodox manner, lead singer Joe Goddard sang from the far right of the stage making some patrons wonder where the high pitched vocals were actually coming from. Alexis Taylor, also contributed vocals as he performed all over the stage, changing between synths, guitar and some percussion.
With their set spanning over and hour, the Hot Chip crew were able to sufficiently perform all of their hits and well-known tracks, the most obvious being My Piano , the single in which the tour is in light of. For more researched people and long-time Hot Chippers, the beautiful Boy From School and the faster track Over and Over were the top performances of the night.
The tracks towards the end of the performance grew into a series of freestyle riffs, more so in their encore, which seemed unlikely when one of the band’s synthesisers blew out. Thankfully they managed to bring the track and the performance to an eventful close.
