Alexis Taylor

Alexis Taylor has somehow racked up 25 years now as a founding member of Hot Chip and is about to release his seventh album, the rather magnificent Paris In Spring. How did that happen?

I spoke to Alexis about balancing songcraft with production. We talk about how a busy year sharpened his focus, why finishing isn’t real until the music meets an audience, and how a strong melody and a few true lines can carry a track across any arrangement.

Alexis opens up about writing from feeling without turning songs into diary entries. He shares the stories behind darker cuts that circle self-distraction and drinking without exploiting pain, and he explains how Scott English’s Brandy and pop’s long history of reinvention influenced his approach. We get into one about how to approach covers: taking the Stones’ Wild Horses into a dub-soaked slow-burn shaped by Rhythm & Sound textures and Euro-pop reggae echoes, built with producer Pierre Rousseau and recorded at Nicolas Godin’s studio.

We also rewind to early London shows and why refusing the uniform of the era helped Hot Chip find its own lane—irony beside tenderness, dance beside detail, authenticity without cosplay. From Beastie Boys devotion to Royal Trux revelations, Alexis maps the influences that mattered and how they were absorbed rather than imitated.

Alexis Taylor on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/alexishotchip/?hl=en

Alexis Taylor on Bandcamp:

https://alexistaylor.bandcamp.com/album/paris-in-the-spring

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My book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press

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You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Transcript

Host Intro And Setup

Paul 0:03

Alexis Taylor has recently celebrated 25 years in Hot Chip. And he's just about to release his seventh solo album. And I don't know about you, but his voice feels woven into the fabric of a certain kind of music literate yet soulful pop. So I was super excited to have the conversation you're about to hear. Hello. Yes, it's Lost and Sound, the show that goes deep with artists shaping music and culture from the underground up. Let's start the show. I'm Paul Hamford, I'm your host, I'm an author, a broadcaster, and a lecturer. And each week on the show, I have a conversation with an artist who works outside the box about music, creativity, and about how they're navigating life through their art. So whether you're new here or you've been listening for a while, it's great to have you along. And I'm speaking to you from outside my desk space on a street in Neukelm in Berlin. And it's actually nighttime. I think this is maybe the first time I've done this little talkie bit to you at night. It's a little bit different. The vibe is a little bit different. And I wonder if that's coming across to you. I hope whatever you're doing, you're having a good one. You're staying sane and safe in this precarious, shitty world right now. On the show today, Alexis Taylor, founding member of Hot Chip, as well as a solo artist in his own right. I feel like a lot of people have grown up with Hot Chip. I know I kind of have a bit. They band recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, and I can't tell you the amount of times I've danced to over and over or ready for the floor on sticky floored indie discos over the years. And since the early noughties, they've carved their own space, making electronic pot that has always trod a line between serious credibility and dance floor fun. They've mixed a sort of deep record collector obsessiveness with genuinely heartfelt moments. And at the centre of this, Alexis Taylor's voice, there's something just really sweet about it. I'm always surprised when I listen at how soulful his voice is when I hear it. So Alexis is just about to release his seventh solo album. It's called Paris in the Spring. He recorded a lot of it in Paris at Nicolas Gaudin's studio from Air. I in your hear I pronounced Nicolas Gaudin's name very badly during the episode. Little bit of cringe there, but you know. And the album is fantastic. And we had this chat, which is a real deep dive into Alexis's creative process, often through the lens of this album. We touch on some other stuff as well. Yeah, it's a thoroughly interesting chat, I think. But before we get going, Lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica. For over 60 years, this family-run company has been making the kind of gear that helps artists, DJs, and listeners alike really hear the detail: headphones, microphones, turntables, and cartridges. Studio quality, beautifully engineered and designed and built on the belief that great sound should be for everyone. So wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnica.com to check out all of their range of stuff. Okay, so um, me talking with Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip, also Alexis Taylor from solo Alexis Taylor albums, and that's the connection that we had the conversation through with the upcoming release of his new album, Paris in the Spring. And we had this chat on February the 27th, 2026, and this is what happened when I met Alexis Taylor. How's your year started? Do you feel like you're pretty into the momentum of 2026 yet?

Alexis Taylor 5:07

Or so definitely, yeah. Um it's been like one of the busiest starts to the year ever. I've been getting all of this music ready, you know, and and out in the world for this solo record, but also been making a hot chip album as well. So the two things are right side by side at all times at the moment, and DJing as well, and and figuring out how to play this new album live with other musicians. And uh yeah, so it's a it's super busy. I've been to Australia, Japan, Mexico, New York, and Milan as well, which sounds like a lot, and it has felt like quite a lot, like to to kind of go to all those places. And the start of the year was promoting the best of Hot Chip compilation. So there's the there was that record as well as the new record being made, as well as the solo record already finished, but kind of all the work related to promoting it. And yeah, so it's yeah, I don't mean to keep reiterating, but it's been busy.

Balancing Solo And Hot Chip

Paul 6:16

It's been pretty busy. How do you keep um how do you keep focused and and with all of these things going on, like you know, how do you kind of manage to negotiate the different hats that you have to put on?

Alexis Taylor 6:30

Well, at least with the the work I'm doing for the solo record at the moment, a lot of that has been promotional stuff rather than having to to sort of do anything creative at this point because I've already finished it. Although I've been filming videos so and writing video treatments and things. Um I don't know what the answer is other than just having to do it because it's it's necessary to do it. I don't know how how you do it. But um the the thing that's been, I suppose, challenging for me, but I find a way, is until this album of mine, this new album of mine is actually out in the world and I'm playing shows, it doesn't feel like that work that I began is actually complete.

Paul 7:17

Yeah.

Alexis Taylor 7:18

So to be simultaneously writing and making a new hot chip record and being completely focused on that means you have to put aside something that you're basically in the middle of doing. So it isn't easy, but there are worse positions to be in, you know, and it's all it's all music making, which I love doing, and it's all of my own making, as it were, these the fact that this is all happening. So uh yes, it's fine. I just I just think um there's never really gonna be a way, as long as I do both things, there's never gonna be a way for it to not slightly overlap. And I'm feeling good about the new music we're making with Hot Chip, and I feel really good about this record. So I've just got to kind of hope that it reaches people and you know, and the word gets out there that it exists, I suppose.

Reflection Versus Forward Motion

Paul 8:10

Yeah, yeah. I mean, because it's um yeah, 25 years of hot chip recently, and you know, you've been promoting that as well. And the solo album is your seventh solo album. How do you feel like, you know, because I mean like having a 25th anniversary and touring that is is like a bit of a sort of a marker, isn't it? Like, how do you feel like that sense of time passing into your own work? Do you does that kind of you know, doing something like a 25-year thing, does that cause you like a sense of reflection over that time, or are you always like a kind of a forward-facing person?

Songwriting Core And Production Choices

Stripping Songs Back Live

Alexis Taylor 8:46

I think that I am quite forward-facing, really, in general, and the same with Joe and everyone else in the band. But what happens is you're just asked to engage with the past more when you have a best of compilation out or when you have interview questions about how long you've been going for. But there's nothing wrong with having been going for a while. It can cause you to think about aging and so on. But I'm proud of the fact that we've been at it for a while and pi and still together and you know, still making new music and um this thing that could have just been a momentary sort of experiment. It's something that we really have been devoted to since day one, took very seriously as a young band and continued to to do it. We you know, we were fortunate that people paid attention to it or liked it or reviewed it or you know, came to shows and that's continued. But yeah, I I would be lying if I said it didn't sometimes distract you from going forward when you're forced to kind of think about reflect on the past. But it's mainly very positive feelings I have when reflecting, but I don't always have answers either to questions about the stuff in the past because you you made it so long ago. It's not always easy to remember everything about what where your head was at or what you were doing when you were recording it, and it's certainly more of a interesting thing for me to think about why I'm making new music now still and what what it is that interests me in that. And I think that there are different aspects of music making that are focal points for me. The production is really, really interesting to me. And I think looking back over the records I've put out and this new one, they actually tend to sound quite different from one record to another. So that's that's a big part of it, is like whatever is interesting me at that point in time focuses me in the presentation of the music, but perhaps even more than the production, it's the songwriting as a solo artist that is the driving force for it. And I suppose some of the time I let those songs be quite unadorned and bare bones, and you can therefore really see that I'm a singer-songwriter at at the heart of it all. But then on other records like this newest one, I think I've struck the right balance where the production and the presentation of the music doesn't hit you over the head with the idea that this is some singer-songwriter music. But actually, when I've just been starting two days ago to do promo and radio sessions for it, and I've been forced by the nature of the radio stations to just bring one instrument and play on my own. I've been playing this material on an acoustic guitar, which none of the album is written on an acoustic guitar. None of it started that way. But being forced to strip it back to one instrument and quite a traditional instrument has meant that I can hear that the songs at the core of it are the the sort of um the songwriting is is quite traditional in a way and is, I think, stronger than on other records, so that the tracks stand up to that kind of scrutiny. And that's been nice for me to realise. I don't know if other people would agree with that, but that's just my own take on it. So you do something which is more about the combination of the production and the songwriting, and you really want to make something which sounds interesting production-wise, and yet you can take that away and still be left with a song that works.

Paul 12:48

Yeah, I think quite often I've heard people talk about like the idea that I was stripping a song back and like it has to be able to stand up on its own, you know. And I don't know if the songs necessarily have to stand up on their own without production, because I, you know, like it depends how far into the electronic sphere you want to go, you know. But I think in terms of what you're doing, and there's always been this balance, like whether it's solo or hot chip, between the songwriting and the production and like bringing in new ideas, but sort of retaining some kind of authenticity about what you're going through at the time. Yeah, I I feel like there's always been this sense with hot chip that um, you know, we've all grown up a bit with hot chip, you know, whether it's like songs about friendship or fatherhood, you know, is they they sort of catch you at different points. Has that always been very important to you to capture like what you're going through at that point in your life and document it?

Writing From Life And Imagination

Dark Pop, Alcohol, And Influence

Alexis Taylor 13:48

I think that what what I go through in life and how that affects me emotionally, or anything that I'm observing in others around me, close friends or or even things which aren't close to me. Sometimes things make an emotional impact which form the beginnings of a song idea, but the the focus for me isn't necessarily summarizing or documenting precisely what I've gone through. It's taking something emotional or not or not necessarily emotional, something that's just had some impact and saying, Well, what what interests me about that or what am I observing about that? Where can I go with that? Not as a tool to get somewhere, but uh it tends to be quite a natural process that something strikes me as interesting or affecting in some way. Um I I hope that it doesn't only sound like realism or documentation of something personal that that is required to be known about in order for the songs to survive. It you have to take it away from a sort of diary of of your life. And also I think that the way you work as a songwriter is that you focus in on something and that very active focusing can mean that you spend longer on the emotional core of the idea than you do in your real day-to-day life. So things get it get distorted or exaggerated or extrapolated out from or become the focus, and that isn't necessarily that you live your life to the extreme that the things are an emotional aspect of a song. That doesn't mean I'm deflecting from when things are so difficult or troubling in my in my life. I I admit that that is a part of something that affects my songwriting, but I also look at these songs after they're finished and realize there was this thing that I was thinking about, and it's the focus for those four lines, and then I go somewhere completely different, which isn't to do with that original idea in a very logical direct way, it's more that I'm happy to let things flow out from that, and maybe the song becomes more interesting for being about multiple things or going off in different directions. But there are they're just different examples in different cases. You know, there's a song like for a toy where I felt I felt very sort of sad and and um wondering about some behavior of my own to do with distracting yourself from what could be your focus, and that's self-destructive behavior. And so that is key to that song, but then on another song, like fainting by numbers, I'm writing from a kind of partly real emotional place, and partly from a songwriting perspective where you're using your imagination. So I've not been crawling on the floor and not being able to walk and drinking till passing out and the world spinning around me, but I can relate to the idea that that is something that does happen to people because without to go into specifics, I do know people who have died through alcoholism and I've been around them and and I'm not using their their lives as a you know source, but but I'm affected by it. So some of it's my imagination and some of it is uh losing friends and thinking about the the topic of self-destruction and not wanting to be too specific. I don't think you even really have to know what that song refers to. I think it can you know, fainting by numbers as an expression doesn't really tell you about something directly, but you can probably work it out that it is to do with well what I was getting at, like I say, is partly to do with that self-destructive behaviour to do with alcoholism. But I also was struck by how good a song this song by Scott English, which is a kind of one-hit wonder, um, is called Brandy. And he wrote it, I think, in the early 70s, and it became the song that Barry Manilo turned into Mandy. But before Mandy, it was a song about a drink. Brandy and the words are all the same except the word brandy. And once I was told about that song by my friend Justus Kirnker, who I have a group with called Fainting by Numbers, wrote this song, and it ended up not being part of Fainting by Numbers project, but part of my record. But it was in a way, it was thinking about the conventions of a of an interesting pop song about drinking. So I'm trying to give you all the context so you know that it's not a kind of crude exercise in all what could I write about, but it's more I'm affected by things I've experienced and other people around me have experienced, and I've had a conversation with somebody and I've listened to that song and thought it would be good to write a sort of dark pop song about that topic because that interests me. Um so I suppose I give those two examples of foratory and fainting by numbers that are both of them involve the imagination as much as things you've lived through. And this album is no exception from others in terms of me working like that. But the ones that the ones that are the most sort of uh affecting for me, they do have a very important emotional core to them. The one called Columbia, the one called Life. They start with something that you that you're pondering how how you feel, and maybe you're in a place emotionally that feels different from somewhere you've been before, or you or you can kind of paint a picture of something that feels interesting more than just saying I don't feel that good about something. You know, there's more to it than that. And the other thing I suppose that's a bit interesting and a bit surprising to me is that something like Wild Horses, the Russian song. I love that song, but it's not as close to the things I've experienced as all of these other songs are. It's somebody else's lyric writing. Yeah. I can relate to it, but it's not one of those songs where I go, that's exactly how I've felt. It's more that I just love the the way it makes me feel. So with the other songs saying the same statement, really.

Cover Philosophy And Reinvention

Paul 21:09

Yeah, yeah, very amazingly put. I mean, I I was thinking about Wild Horses listening to to it earlier on, and um about like what you're saying there, and about how um sometimes I feel like you know, the songwriting is is the same as any other form of like writing, like being a novelist or or a screenwriter. You know, you you might be drawing on your influences and things that have happened to you, but there's like an expansion that happens just naturally with how you want to go with things, isn't there? But when when it comes to like a cover version, and you know, you also like I was thinking about your version of Elvis' crying in the chapel. Yeah um what is it like you feel like treating other people's material? Do you have any like are there any like sort of standard things that you always try to observe? any any kind of like reverentialnesses or sort of just like sort of things like you don't do this with a cover or you do do this with a cover or a cover should at least do this to justify being its own song?

Alexis Taylor 22:14

Good good questions really I mean for most of my life any covers I've done with Hot Chip or solo and I'm mean even from the age of like 15 or something onward they've been more interesting to me if I feel like I just kind of know the song's core and it's there in me in some way but I haven't learnt the precise elements of it to the extent that it's a carbon copy of it. So that will mean I've sort of boldly gone into covering things even in the middle of live shows with no preparation I've just spontaneously done it where a song is kind of somewhere inside me because it's just been known in me. I've known it for so long and I won't always get the chords exactly the same. I won't always think you've got to have that key melody that they do on this synth in order for it to be the cover. You know I'd rather take it somewhere else. So the starting point to me is that it's it's struck a chord with me and that's more important than knowing it inside out.

Paul 23:31

Yeah.

Wild Horses Through Dub And Reggae

Alexis Taylor 23:31

The other thing is I'd love to like take the song somewhere new and any cover that's too faithful doesn't really feel worth doing. The one exception to that that we've done as a band is we did Sabotage by the Beastie Boys. And yeah you can tell it's us rather than them but it is very close to the arrangement of their version and even my attempt at doing Ad Rock's voice, you know, I didn't sing it really putting a new spin on it but what I thought was maybe okay about it being so close to the original is is that Hot Chip never have sounded like that. So that maybe that's the bit that's unusual and surprising is that we that we end up making a thing that sounds like that. Whereas with every other cover I've wanted to sort of yeah just surprise the listener in some way with where it you can go with it. And particularly with this Wild Horses cover it stemmed from me liking and being obsessed with a couple of different records and and producers one of which is um I've talked about them a lot but there's a series of records by Rhythm and Sound which is from the same people who did basic channel Mark Ernestis and Moritz von Oswald and I wanted A to make some music I didn't know what it would be whether it'd be a cover or my own music I've wanted for maybe several years now to make music that is reggae and dub influenced but has me singing and that is maybe in a similar vein to their productions which are all about amazing bass and simplicity and minimalism but they're also about textural points of interest and noise and I also was really obsessed with an obscure kind of Euro pop reggae record by spectral display called It Takes a Muscle to fall in love and having been listening to both of those things a lot I said to Pierre Rousseau who was the producer I was working with in France on this album I'd love to make something that sounds like those things and he said how much he also loves those two quite disparate sources. So I sketched out a cover of the song and then handed it over to him to do the production that takes those things as inspiration and then goes somewhere else. And why it was Wild Horses rather than another song I can't really remember but I think I was just saying to Pierre that I was interested in that song and another song called Wild Horses which is by Prefab Sprout. So we actually made versions of both of those songs and then we were beginning to build a sort of idea for a project together that would be all horses related covers and and he would always be the producer and I would be the person suggesting the song and like playing in the middle of the chords and singing. So that feels now very hard for me to remember why particularly it needed to be that song other than just the fact that I like it. But it's not like the Rolling Stones version has something to do with German reggae music or reggae music. I've just made them have something to do with each other in a very kind of weird way. But I don't know how interesting it is or not but it's it's mainly the Flying Burrito brothers version of that song that I know and that I love so that's a cover of a of a song already. So I'm covering a and I think maybe the Flying Burrito brothers version might have come out before the Stones version even though it was obviously written by the Stones. So yeah I don't know I guess I'm just trying to celebrate a song that that is very famous but I feel like there's more you can do with it.

Paris Sessions And Studio Serendipity

Paul 27:57

Yeah yeah um and it goes back to what you're saying about like I mean what we started talking about about stripping a song down and and like that from stripping a song down it can be transposed in a different way or feel something in a different way. I was just as an aside I was really interested in what you were saying about the sabotage cover because I feel something like the Beastie Boys in like 1998 when that came out I remember at the time and there I feel like doing a c was there a an aspect of sounding like them that was I remember at the time it's like I feel like a boy my age at the time we all wanted to be the beastie boys and um yeah you know it was as it was about sort of emulating them you know rather than like spinning for me like I feel like rather than wanting to spin something different out of the Beastie Boys there's equally something about just wanting to be as cool as the Beastie Boys in 1998.

Alexis Taylor 28:51

Was that part of a yeah I think it came out a bit earlier I think 94 or 95 but um I oh you're right sabotage I was getting mixed up with Intergalactic for a second yeah sorry yeah 95 yeah 9495 but it's that doesn't take away from your point I mean yeah as a teenager I wanted to be like them to some extent I don't think I tried very hard um but I think part of covering that song is is sort of saying this band has meant a lot to Hotchip for our whole career it's a formative influence it's like music we listened to as teenagers and it's still relevant now and they're still interesting now and the production's amazing and you know and they they totally outlived their initial emergence as a band that was seen as kind of bratish and misogynistic and juvenile and became a far more interesting band with interesting things to say and great production and great rhymes and voices and and music making. Not the spokesperson but the they went from being rappers where Rick Rubin would produce and kind of make the beats for that most well known first record. Obviously they had done music before that where they were very different and it was all made by them but they sort of outgrew the the reputation and the and the sort of tabloid press sort of version of who they were and became a very interesting band. And I suppose we noticed all of that as teenagers you know I I was aware of their first record when I would have been seven because my brother bought that first album and I thought it was really exciting and really good. I then was aware of them again not not with Paul's boutique because that completely went under the radar but when Check Your Head came out I remember watching their music videos on MTV and thinking oh is that the same band that's the BC you know I really love that song um uh which one is it from from um Check Your Head that I'm thinking of uh so what you want and so it was that and then sabotage that were the kind of big moments for me of like being inspired by that group but that's a very long answer. I think the real answer to your question is yes be like the Beastie Boys to some extent.

People, Gear, And Process In Paris

Paul 31:46

Yeah amazing I mean uh a few more on on Paris in the spring and um so some really really loving what you're saying and like how you explore the songwriting and you touched on the production you know you touched on like bringing in influences like from the basic channel and stuff like that and and and also uh like the what you know how you worked with Pierre Rousseau on this and you also did quite a lot of it at Nicholas Godin from Air Studio um could you tell us just a little bit about how it came about like was Paris a thing you know did that become was this something that you wanted to get some of before you started doing it or was it like more of like just like a process of things happen and they they build as they happen I think the the real answer might be that having things is things are circumstantial and coincidental but what happened was Hot Chip went to Paris to work with Philippe Zadar and we had a really good experience working there with him in Motorbase it was only really the second time as a band we'd gone away out of London to work on a record we had a really good time it was it was finishing an album it wasn't the whole process we did take fully formed written well recorded demos that were produced by us and we worked with somebody else in London a lot as well called Roddy McDonald and then we went to Philippe and we had this amazing time working with him there.

Paris As Backdrop, Not Concept

Instruments Of Funk, Themes Of Solitude

Alexis Taylor 33:29

Obviously tragically he died about a year after we worked with him and we had felt like we were probably going to go back and work with him on something else because it'd been such a joyous experience and he brought so much to what we were doing. So I think that there was something of a hangover of wanting to be back in Paris for something but that didn't end up happening with the next Hotchip record. Then I had worked with Nicolas Godin from Air and Pierre Rousseau on a track that I was collaborating on for Nicolas's last album Concrete and Glass so that song Catch Yourself Falling was the beginning of me getting to know Nicolas and his producer Pierre I don't really remember when it was that I got to visit his studio for the first time because we we tracked my vocals for that song somewhere else in a more famous classic French studio that I'm blanking on the name of that has you know Serge Gansborg's cigarette burns in the piano which maybe as far as I can tell perhaps every Parisian studio has that but I think he left his mark everywhere but at some point I must have visited Nicolas studio and I just thought how amazing it was and I asked him if I could do a recording session there but I didn't really know this is the beginning of me making an album at all and I also didn't know this is the beginning of me now working in your studio and therefore in Paris. It was just can I try using it yes you can which was super generous of him and then when I was there I was you know I didn't really know how it would work and I asked would I need to sort of record everything myself and he said oh I'll ask my son to engineer the sessions so his son Pablo was booked to engineer the sessions and he was fantastic like one of the best people I've ever worked with a very young producer engineer and music maker in his own right and he had such a good sort of demeanor on a personal level and the skills that you need to work really quickly and record an engineer and set up the mics and edit within logic and make the whole process smooth and give a give feedback on what what I'm doing but not so much feedback that it feels controlling and so on. The balance of all of that is is really really important in an engineer and and I haven't met that many people who are that good. So I had Nicolas studio to work in I had his son engineering on the first session Nicolai himself played a bit of bass guitar and he helped me where I I played the vocoder things but he set the set it up for me and showed me which of his many vocodas could do the job I wanted. And then he wrote some parts in the chorus of this song the song I'm talking about is called MP3s Can Make You Cry. So that was the very first thing we we did there. And then like I say it's all circumstance so Pierre Rousseau wasn't involved in making any of this but he had the room at the time in the same building he had this very small room that was his own music studio. And so when he finished working on what he was working on that day he just popped his head in and and asked if he could hear what we were doing and then asked if he could try something because he had an idea. So he just experimented and added a sort of synth drone to the track and maybe a little bit more than that. But it was really a group effort of you know I've come in with this song and I think I played loads of instruments on it you know guitar, drums, vibraphone, vendor, clavinet vocoda sort of multi-tracked everything myself but then with Nicolai playing the bass and Pierre adding some kind of extra production and that that process then became a way of working for other songs. I think Nicolas was less involved because he just wasn't around he was less involved but he did play on one other song but it's a bonus track um and the rest were mainly me and Pierre and Pablo Godin in the room. When I say the rest the rest of the ones done in Paris yeah it's about the first half of the record or two thirds of it maybe um so as it was happening and feeling good and that this was the key thing for me was this studio makes me feel really at home and really like I can also be the opposite of home like I can focus on music I'm not in my home I'm just away able to concentrate and I would only do like two days at a time it wasn't weeks and weeks of being in there. So I could just get a lot of work done very quickly in a couple of days sketch things out and those sketches were the basis of the final tracks it just started to feel good and I didn't you know I didn't have enough time to like be in Paris absorbing the Parisian nightlife or atmosphere or going to galleries you know I've been there a lot in my life but I barely had any time there for these sessions because I was just in the studio until finishing and then getting the train back to London. So Paris is really important to the record but only only as a sort of backdrop to it and these fleeting moments of leaving the studio and walking down a street and feeling good about the music I've made and looking at the sunlight and the buildings and I think everywhere affects where you are but I I don't want to downplay the Paris aspect of it. It's more that I just in reality didn't have have as much time there as I had inside a windowless room making recordings.

Paul 39:57

A very beautiful windowless room maybe the nicest you could be in yeah so it wasn't like you were like it wasn't like Paris is like the theme that you're exploring like that it wasn't like the Alexis Taylor Paris album it was just these elements that were there and and the people you were working with that created it.

Palette Limits And Past Album Contrast

Early London Years And No-Scene Identity

Alexis Taylor 40:20

Yeah I mean the way in which Paris would be a part of it is you know Etienne de Cressy helped me with one track Nicolas Godin lives in Paris I'm in his studio in Paris he's a Parisian music maker his influence is there somewhere on the tracks he worked on the very fact of me wanting to use the Vocoda that's used loads in French dance music it's not their invention and they don't have the kind of control of that as a sound but it's it's a big part of Dart Punk and air and so there is an influence from that city definitely I wouldn't downplay it but it's not a conscious decision to say oh do you know what I'd love to make something that sounds more French. It's more it's more that I found the people I wanted to work with and they happened to be based there and of course maybe somebody would say the same about us if if Hot Chip were producing they might be saying oh we wanted something of a a London sort of sound or we wanted the things that happen when you've lived in London your whole life as producers you've you've absorbed all of these different cultures of dance music and they're all in the the mix maybe we do bring those things to our own music and other people's music when we're producing and and vice versa with Pierre and Nicolas but I suppose it was just this feels like the right place to get some good work done and it also felt inspiring um but the thing that is surprising about inspiration is you know why should it be that one interior of a music studio where you can't see the outside world should be the place that things all come together? Well clearly it's to do with the songs you've got in your head where they are at how they land with the people that you're recording them with do those people feel good about them and they give you good feedback on them do those people do good things that take them somewhere further does the instrumentation you've got access to in the studio make a difference? Yes I mean I've been in studios that have no instruments in them other than a piano and I've made good music in them but I've not made Cynthia electronic records in those studios I've not decided to bring my entire music studio to their studio I've just gone okay I'm gonna concentrate on the piano here but in in this case I was just surrounded by all of my favourite like absolute wish list of like bits of gear that Nicolas has built a collection of for years and it's clearly it's his sort of paradise play environment you know to to make whatever he wants in that way. So and also the another thing that's important to me is that sometimes it's important to not know where you're going as you're doing it. Absolutely so I knew I wanted to play some of these instruments and I know that I know the clavernet sound from Stevie Wonder Records and the you know similar instrument the the peanut is all over the Sly in the Family Stone records and the same drum machines that Nicola has are on some of those Sly in the Family Stone records which are the same influences that the Beastie Boys had coincidentally when they're making check your head and your computer Communication, that kind of funk music is a bit of a backbone to what I've always wanted to do. However, the only thing that seemed interesting to me about using that stuff, A, was to explore and experiment with it and not know where you're going. And B to then look back on what you've just done and think maybe the point of interest here is that you make something that sounds incredibly desolate and isolated and lonely rather than funky and sexy and all about everybody coming together and dancing and being up tempo. That was just something I noticed I was doing. It wasn't that I set out to do it. But once I once I became conscious of it, I thought perhaps that's the kind of core of this record is you take the instruments of funk music, but you talk about isolation and loneliness more than you talk about exuberance and joyous things, which are sometimes what we associate with with funk. Um that felt like an interesting kind of turning of something on its head to me. But it was it came about more more um organically, and also not every song on the record is like that. Some of them have those same instruments and they're really joyous, like I can feel your love. Um, so you can't be too prescriptive, but you do want to sort of know that you're working in something that feels like a a sound world or has some consistency throughout it. That was important to me. And and on the last record I did called Silence, that was important to me. I just chose a very different palette of sounds, so I restricted myself. It can only really be, and I don't know why I did this, but I felt like it needed to be things that you recorded with microphones that were maybe instruments that had been in the world for hundreds of years. So that's why there's a a harp and a piano and a double bass and wind instruments rather than synthesizers and drum machines, which are things that I absolutely love, you know. It was a it was a way to say what can you do with this other palette of sounds, and that just happened to be where my head was at at that point in time.

Paul 46:24

Yeah. Um, you mentioned just a little bit earlier on about like how uh when we're talking about Paris and about how going into that environment and about like if people had come to London perhaps and and were kind of getting more of the environment of like what your London experience. And I still wanted to ask you just a few questions about about this. So you've you've basically you you're a born and bred Londoner, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And and like when hot chip first sort of I don't want to use the word exploded because that feels like really sort of hyper hyperbole, but uh when when you know hot chip, but the impact of hot chip happened, like you know, there was this really, really sort of it feels in retrospect like a very interesting time in London. I think in a lot of ways it was. It was London was still relatively affordable as a young creative person. It was also um you had the whole kind of like Shoreditch thing that hadn't quite become I mean it was very gentrified, but it was it was still it was at the creative level of gentrification rather than the uh you know the the PRETS and level. And and I was wondering I'm wondering what your reflections are of that time, you know, when all of this was emerging, you and Joe and everyone else. What do you look back on now? What do you think about that?

Authenticity Beyond Rock Uniforms

Royal Trux And Building A Unique Sound

Alexis Taylor 47:44

One thing that comes to mind in answer to that question is that we didn't really know of it as being an interesting time specifically. You know, that moment that you're describing, everything you said is accurate. You know, it was affordable relatively. Um at one point I lived in East London in Shoreditch or near to there in a flat that was affordable, and it meant that I could walk home from a night out at Plastic People or something, and it was exciting to be in that bit of London, having always grown up in West London in a more relatively suburban bit of London. There was a lot that was exciting, but also we felt like we were not part of any scene at that point when we were emerging. We definitely knew no one else, and I don't mean this in a sort of pretentious way or you know trying to prove a point, but I'm just thinking about it now. We didn't know anyone else that was trying to make the kind of music we were trying to make. We didn't have contemporaries that we were aware of who were saying, Have you heard that Barbara Sparks record, or have you heard that Destiny's Child record? And yet, have you heard that Will Oldham or that smog record? And how can we like make something that's us, but that's inspired by that and that, and those things are completely different from each other. There were no rules telling us you shouldn't really try and combine lo-fi Americana with an influence from American slick RB music with UK Garage as an influence, with a bit of an influence from Ween and the Beastie Boys. It was just like, well, that's us. Those are the things we've grown up liking, and we and we're writing some songs using very quite rudimentary instruments, like a very cheap Casio keyboard and cue bass, or a or an old Far Fisa organ that probably wasn't that cheap, but it was relatively cheap for what it would be worth now. Um, you know, bought I think I bought it on uh we didn't have Gumtree, but whatever it was called, loot, like where cars are for sale or bits and pieces of sale. So we only had about three instruments, and we were kind of in our own world making music. We were influenced massively by other records, but not so much by our contemporaries at that point, and so we didn't feel like we were emerging from within a scene, and all of the early London East End shows that we played in Shoreditch, 93 feet east, or the Spits, or different places, we stuck out we know we got up on stage and we had five people in a row, a drum machine or a keyboard each, and no amplifiers, and no drum kit, and we weren't trying to sound like Joy Division or the Strokes or the Velvet Underground. We didn't wear leather jackets and black trousers, skinny jeans, sunglasses on stage, and I really felt like that's all that everyone else did do at that point. Yeah, and I was really just you know, I I'm maybe quite reactive against things. Yeah, I love the Velvet Underground, I think they're one of the best bands ever, but I just was embarrassed by how everyone felt like all you needed to do was to sound like the most classic rock music, and then you had authenticity. And and to me, it was more interesting to say we're gonna go very far in another direction, but we'll be authentic, and you work out for yourself within that authenticity that there are layers to it, and I'm not trying to over-eg it and say it's so sophisticated, it's not hard to understand it, but you can have irony in what you do, you can have heartfelt moments, you can have humor, it can all be in the mix. That doesn't make it inauthentic, and to also draw attention to how far away you are in the lives you live as middle-class kids in Chiswick and Putney from your influences in you know American hip-hop music. Maybe that was I think for Joe particularly that was a point of interest to say, like, I want to underline how how we're not those people, but we're singing about loving all of that stuff. So all of that stuff I think made us have some impact because people were trying to they must have liked the melodies and the words and things in the production, but they were also trying to understand us. So it wasn't until the second album and a bit later on that we met bands in America that had a bit more in common with us. Maybe they weren't trying to sound like Destiny's Child, but they were trying to make dance music, but they were coming from a punk background, or from thinking of L C D or something, or they were trying to make dance music, but they were coming from a hip-hop background in terms of the band Holy Ghost that used to be Or Tomato, that was a hip-hop project, you know, or Black Dice, or lots of things that were on DFA were the first things that we felt we had something in common with the those other human beings making music. Whereas in in the UK, we were just we were always just the first band on ahead of more of a conventional indie band.

Paul 53:55

Yeah. I I remember that time very well, like uh going to 93 foot east and spitz and uh um and and yeah, the isn't it love what you're saying about the Velvet Underground as well. Like this, I think it's just I don't want to sort of be hateful to anyone or or like even just like a sort of type of thing, but this idea of feeling that you can be authentic by copying something that's authentic rather than finding your own way of doing it.

Alexis Taylor 54:24

Yeah. Making music or playing music involves so many different skills, and some people's skills are to replicate something they've heard before, and that's not a bad skill, you know. That's that's the sort of skill of observing something and working out what are the precise ways in which those records were produced. Well, I can now learn from that and do that, and I I'm not gonna name names, but there's loads of super successful artists that I feel do that more than they originate or do something of their own. And then there are other bands where they've got the right attitude, the right looks, and they're gonna do well for a bit, and maybe it's just not that interesting at the core of it because it doesn't have that much of its own thing. Or I don't know, maybe this isn't really an interesting avenue to go down because it ends up just being me being negative about things. But I suppose here's the thing that really struck me as a younger person making the beginnings of making music was I went to Brighton with Joe to watch Royal Trucks play in 1998, and I thought their album Accelerator sounded like nothing else, and I still think it sounds like nothing else, and it's one of the most amazing records ever. The band opening for them, and I don't know what they were called. I looked at them and I thought they're really good at playing their instruments, they're really well rehearsed, and our band, by comparison, was so under-rehearsed, so sort of ramshackle, and like I just thought what I can take away from this band opening is we need to get better at rehearsing hard. But what I can also take away from it is they've left me feeling nothing from their music because I felt it was too close to their influences, it just seemed like indie by numbers.

Paul 56:26

Yeah.

Craft, Impact, And Lasting Production

Closing Thanks And Release Details

Alexis Taylor 56:27

And then Royal Trucks come on, and they sound different from Accelerator does on record, like another whole dimension to what they're doing. And they, I mean, uh honestly, they don't really seem to be like any other group in terms of Jennifer's voice, Neil's voice, the guitar playing, the melding of different influences to make something new, the fact that they've got classic rock kind of influences in there in the mix with avant-garde and experimental tendencies that are very real in their music. It wasn't a cerebral experience, it was an incredibly powerful, lively, groove-based music set that felt like you could have been watching parts of the stones or parts of Sly and the Family Stone, but something else altogether that was their own. And that was probably the single most important show I went to with Joe in terms of the impact it had on me and Hot Chip. And we've never really made music that sounds just like Royal Trucks, but we have been inspired by them, and and over and over uh wouldn't be there without without their influence. Even you know, the guitar sound in that song, it's it's exactly what I'm talking about because I have not studied what they did and said, so hang on a minute, what guitar was Neil playing? What processing was he doing? How do you get that? I've just gone, I like that excitement that it gives me, and I'm picking up the only guitar that we've got in the room, and we're just quickly trying to make it sound like it has something of the atmosphere of those Royal Trucks records, but very much meeting with other influences like dance music, house music, disco, Devo, LCD, those are influences, but it's not really transparent that it's made up of those influences, it's its own thing. I think it it being its own thing is is key to all of this for me. I want my own music to be, you know, we've talked a lot about the background to this, but the most important thing for me is do people want to put this music on. So they feel something when they listen to it, are they affected by it? But also the production has to be interesting enough that you're drawn in by the sounds, the sonics of it, repeated listens on headphones are rewarding, and that it doesn't sound like something that already exists. Like it's not groundbreaking in the way that the first time somebody would have heard a I don't know, a experimental record by Pierre Henri or something. It's not like that kind of level of groundbreaking by any means. It's more that it's it's got its focus in songwriting, but it wants I'm wanting to bring something new to it in what I say and in the production.

Paul 59:23

Definitely. Um thanks so much for for giving me your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Alexis Taylor 59:29

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the quick okay.

Outro, Sponsor, And Sign-Off

Paul 59:32

So that was me, Paul Hamford, talking with Alexis Taylor for the Lost and Sound Podcast. And we had that conversation on February the 27th, 2026. Thank you so much, Alexis, for sharing your time and thoughts with me there. I really enjoyed that. The album Paris in the Spring is out on the 13th of March. Well, well, well worth digging really deeply into. If you like the show and you haven't already, please give Lost and Sound a subscribe. Give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice. It really, really, really does help. I know I say that every week, but it really does help. And it's always really lovely when I get one coming up. Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica, the global but still family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality, yeah, affordable products because they believe that high-quality audio should be accessible to all. So wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnica.com to check out all of their range of stuff. The music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of Lost and Sound is by Tom Giddens. And so, yeah, that's it for me. I hope whatever you're doing today, you're having a really good one. And yeah, I'll chat to you soon.