Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard has been a man of many fine hats in the last few years from a remixer to DJ to 2 Bears member and more, including Hot Chip naturally.
For his solo material, last year’s Taking Over EP was a fine release from the title track, ‘Step Together’ and ‘She Burns’.
For the newest EP, Endless Love, Goddard once again shows that he can translate knowledge of what works on a dancefloor into effective club cuts. The title track builds a spatial rhythm that references Caribou and the sample frenzy that Moby mined in his Play era but by keeping the focus on the beats not the melodic vocals (sung by Betsy).
Betsy appears on ‘Make It Right’ along with Goddard that adds an emotional weight to the track’s effective pulse. Rapper Trim features on the club-centric ‘Cool It Down’ a Leftism-style cut built on distorted synth wobbles.
Of the last two tracks, ‘Conway Hall’ favours a more atmospheric song style with Goddard leading the slow tempo while a 15 minute track ‘Carried Away’ moves in passages of synth-bleeps to Auto Tuned dance to bell-featuring house and is more of a jam experiment.
The uptempo stuff is the most-effective but Goddard’s solo stuff has grown in stature, to the point it should be as eagerly anticipated as his various other projects.
The EP is out now on Greco-Roman.
