Hotchip // Corn Exchange

After almost killing Hot Chip’s latest album Made in the Dark by playing dangerously too much (as previously done with their previous releases), I was very much looking forward to seeing the band perform their live at the Brighton Corn Exchange.

On entrance, we faced St John Ambulance paramedics escorting young face painted new ravers’ outside to be sick. Was this a sign of things to come? As we entered the hall we found this not to be a case as it was quite a varied crowd that night at the sold out show, although there was later more paramedics taking kids out of the hall and this was before Hot Chip were even on stage! It was an apparent result of NME’s 2+2=5 equivalent to music (that being anything involving Electronica = New Rave), which meant that these kids thought they would fit in with last year’s glow stick gear and visors when actually they just stuck out like a sore thumb.

Support that night came from Matthew Dear, a friend of the band who has many different projects including performing as a techno DJ and producer as Audion. We didn’t make it in time to see Matthew Dear’s full set which was a bit of a shame seeing as I was looking forward to seeing whether his set would be like that of typical M-nusesk releases; i.e. random beeps, bleeps and beats which just sound like doors being slammed with lots of echo on.

We arrived and saw the last song of Dear’s set which featured Hot Chip on stage performing their remix of Matthew Dear’s song “Don and Sherri”, a far better version of the original song.

“Shake a Fist” was the song that opened the show with its purring bass grooves and frenetic light show to boot. Hot Chip went on and played most of the songs from the new album such as “Touch Too Much”, “Don’t Dance”, “Out at the Pictures” and their latest single “Ready for the Floor”, which got everybody bouncing about and waving hands in the air.

They also slotted in older songs “Boy from School”, “Colours” and hit single “Over & Over”. What was clear was the amount of people who left the crowd after “Over & Over”. Some returned but it seemed a shame that people saw that as their cue to go when that was not even halfway through the show.

Another disappointing thing about some of the crowd was everyone just chatting around us throughout the slower paced songs such as “Wrestlers”, “In the Privacy of our Love” and encore track “Made in the Dark”. Clearly these people were only really in it for the party tracks but don’t spoil it for the rest of us who actually might not mind a bit of diversity in the sound of the show, aka fans.

Hot Chip finished up with “No Fit State” from The Warning, a surprising but good choice song to finish with.

One distraction during the set was the sweaty disgusting man off his face dancing topless, who had been abandoned by his mates. He cleared quite a big space around him as he gradually proceeded to do his 1991 era moves backwards through the crowd, shouting at points and with his jeans falling down – no one needs to see your arse crack ok!

Made in the bedroom; play only in the bedroom? Certainly not; Hot Chip extended their inventiveness into their live show what with the slightly different musical arrangement of their songs, some of which just flowed seamlessly into the next like a mix. Despite this, something just wasn’t right for me.

Maybe it was the venue which just seemed like a slightly dressed up community hall with a not so great sound system set up, it just didn’t seem to do them justice fully on the whole. On the other hand maybe it was due to the crowd not really getting so excited about album tracks and seemingly only being in it for the singles which let the side down in terms of atmosphere throughout the headline set. However Hot Chip didn’t let this spoil the show and provided a great night out for the fans.

Photography by Marek Richter. Do you need a photographer for your event? Please contact 07804259916 or email mrichter@brightonfusion.co.uk

Words: The Mexican

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