Hot Chip open up about tragic death of producer Philippe Zdar
Hot Chip have opened up about the shocking death of pioneering producer Philippe Zdar in a new interview.
Speaking with NME recently, the electro band discussed Zdar, who made up half of the French duo Cassius – after he accidentally fell to his death from a Paris rooftop in 2019.
Zdar worked with Hot Chip on their latest album, A Bath Full of Ecstasy. Recalling their time working with Zdar, Hot Chip frontman Alexis Taylor said: “I just remember Philippe’s love for music. When we worked in an earlier part of making that album, it was very clinical. We’d sit in studios listening to what we’d already done and making judgments about what to take out and what to leave in. We weren’t really playing and having fun in the studio. But Philippe brought this liveliness to it, which was so special.
“He was good at making us feel like a band and unified and that everyone’s idea and work was valid. Philippe would stand there while we were playing parts on the keyboard and clapping and dancing – he just had so much enthusiasm. It was really tragic what happened to him, and it’s really cruel that someone who was so full of life is not there anymore.”
To mark the release of the band’s upcoming new album, Freakout/Release, Hot Chip are set to perform a string of UK and European shows between August 18th and October 8th. The run will include a four-night billing at the O2 Academy Brixton in London.
Freakout/Release was written and recorded at Hot Chip’s Relax & Enjoy studio in East London and was particularly inspired by their popular live cover of the Beastie Boys‘ classic ‘Sabotage’.
“The idea of being out of control is always there in dance music, in a positive sense,” Hot Chip’s Al Doyle said in a press release. Taylor added: “By the time we were able to be back together, we were turning on a tap and having a lot of ideas being poured out quite quickly.”
Joe Goddard added: “We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways. There’s a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks.”
Listen below to ‘Freakout/Release’, the titular lead single from Hot Chip’s upcoming album.
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