Prolific as a creative, thoughtful as an interviewee, adept at delivering an electro banger in front of a huge festival crowd, Alexis Taylor is an impressive figure. As comfortable with plaintive introspection as he is ring-leading communal euphoria with his group, Hot Chip.
On his new solo record, Paris in the Spring, Taylor is keen to meld the production aesthetics of old with flavours of the new; “Some of the most inspiring elements of making the record happened in a short space of time in a studio in Paris via some element of happenstance,” Alexis tells us.
A never-ending array of musical projects seem to constantly spin around him, from improvisational acts to DJing via music production. Billed as a ‘cosmic cowboy’ record, two thirds of Paris in the Spring was made in Nicolas Godin of Air’s Parisian studio before being completed in London with producer Oli Bayston.
Article continues belowIt features a cast of collaborators, with the likes of Ewan Pearson, Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, Étienne de Crécy, the Avalanches and more, helping Taylor pursue a more off-beat solo vibe. Initially using Nicolas’ studio with older equipment including a Fender Rhodes and Clavinet, Alexis’ ambitions were to twist these tools into more contemporary sounds.
“I didn’t just want to make a seventies singer/songwriter record with this retro instrumentation,” he says. “Instead, I wanted to pull them out of context and utilise contemporary production approaches. By combining these elements, I’m trying to come up with ideas you’ve not heard before. My album might wear its instrumental influences on its sleeve but it does something different too.”
For 26 years, Hot Chip have been key figures in the communication of the quirkier end of electronic music culture to the mainstream. From the indie disco staple, Over and Over to the anthemic Ready For the Floor to newer tracks such as Devotion [featured on their recent best of, Joy in Repetition] Taylor and his compatriots, Joe Goddard, Al Doyle, Owen Clarke and Felix Martin, have blended intricate electronic production techniques with irresistible hooks.
Alexis’ Paris in the Spring is a more idiosyncratic endeavour, a record he’s able to make thanks to the success of his work with the band. Other projects have led to this with his 2021 album Silence using his tinnitus diagnosis as an inspiration while 2016’s Piano was - as its name implies - more minimal.
“I’m proud of this new record and hope that people become aware of it, buy it, come to gigs and have a relationship with it,” Alexis says. “I only make music because of how important it is to me, because I’ve got so much out of listening to other people’s records.
“You don’t know if this will come out and just disappear, it’s harder and harder to get people to pay attention and listen to things as we’re so distracted by modern life and technology, social media - that’s not a complaint, it’s just reality.”
Alexis feels that many of his good songs grow from snatches of inspiration that often hit when outside a studio setting. The track mp3s Can Make You Cry was the first thing he wrote, born out of an idea that landed while at home with his daughter.
“The opening line of the song, 'No good at streaming ’less the tears stream down my face' - came into my head and I recorded it into my phone,” Alexis says. “The track’s theme is how I might not be good at making streaming numbers but I can make music that is emotionally engaging, [and] that this realness is more important than just getting a hit on a digital platform.”
After capturing the song’s initial architecture and lyrics, Alexis then booked time at Air’s Nicolas Godin’s studio in Paris, a musical space he had visited but was yet to work in.
“Essentially, the beginning of the process was having the idea, then somewhere to record that song,” he says. “Nicolas was watching, his son Pablo was the recording engineer but I didn’t necessarily know this would be the beginnings of a new album. I find you don’t really know at the beginning what you’re up to.”
The next song to emerge was Colombia, which entered the studio as a sketch rather than a fully-formed entity. Alexis used the clavinet, then the Maestro Rhythm King drum machine to add flesh to its bones. It was initially 'dry' sounding, and Alexis compares it to the sound of John Lennon’s first solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
“That’s what it sounded like, I initially thought this is all I’ll do, but because Pierre Rousseau was sharing the same building as Nicolas, he popped his head into the room and said he had an idea for it,” says Alexis. “He then helped bring extra production and dimensions to the track.”
This informality of the studio set up led to Pierre continuing to work with Alexis throughout the record. On Colombia, the vocals were processed to lend the song more intimacy.
“My initial experiments in the studio were about finding some elements that combined in an interesting way,” says Alexis. “Much of this instrumentation was popular in seventies music, like the vibrophone, the Rhodes. I love these classic things but I’m always interested in what you can do that’s new as a songwriter too.”
Three different producers featured on the record, Oli Bayston, the Avalanches and Pierre Rousseau, known for his work with Paradis. Each looked to bring their own influences, styles and textures to Alexis’ songs.
“The Avalanches are trying to synthesise things, meld things, they take samples from the past and put them together in an interesting way,” he explains. “Pierre’s imagination and skills were essential in making me feel like I could rely on my songs and my playing and without Oli, the record would never have been finished.
“I see the skills of the producer as knowing what a song needs and when it is good enough, when more writing is needed versus when more production ideas are needed - and knowing how to get the best out of the person. The encouragement kept me going.”
Different instrumentation found its way onto the record by virtue of being in a particular studio where a certain track was being made with the mellotron and harpsichord discovered when recording For a Toy.
“I found these unfamiliar bits of kit and enjoyed being in the moment and experimenting with them,” Alexis says. “As some aspects of these bits of gear are new to you, they can’t help but be inspiring.
“The mellotron has all these different tape banks which I wanted to try out,” he continues. “As I was playing it, I discovered that certain ways you touched the keys made a difference to how you triggered the tape loops and they sounded a bit broken at times if you held the key down more gently. The experimentation is part of the enjoyment and how it gives an element of surprise.”
UK grime, garage, broken beat and the films of David Lynch; Alexis and his Hot Chip comrades have plundered various cultural stimuli to inform their own output. For his cover version of the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses [later covered by Gram Parsons], the influences were more overt with the aim to combine the sonics of Rhythm and Sound with the eighties new wave of Spectral Display.
“Pierre knew those artists and maybe the sources were too disparate but you don’t always need to justify what you’re trying to do,” Alexis says. “The song is so well known too so that was the emotional foundation. It was nice for me to sing this song and feel like that’s me referencing something which I first listened to at school.
“I’m singling it out and showing how important it is to me - in an oblique way, I’m also saying how Gram Parsons is as important to me as reggae music and dance music and techno and this is where I’m at right now - something that is beyond the sum of all these parts.”
Alexis’ career has been defined by his collaborative and creative approach. A mere glance at his Instagram feed reveals that he’s pretty much always busily working on music and looking for new creative catalysts.
“One of the people I had a great songwriting experience with was Lola Kirke,” Alexis says. “The first thing we did together was write something on piano and acoustic guitar and that was a really satisfying experience. I’m known for Hot Chip but I genuinely like folk and country music, and I sought Lola out.”
On Paris in the Spring, the pair came together to write Out of Phase with Alexis wanting to put Lola’s vocals in a fresh sonic context.
“What I really like about the song is taking someone whose voice is known for country music, whose voice is so brilliant, then you put her in this hybrid of dance and pop,” he states. “The very foundations of country, the connection between two singers and the emotional core of a song, this is what underpins the track.”
With his producers, Alexis was less deliberate, initially collaborating with Pierre, Étienne de Crécy and then Oli Bayston in a pragmatic fashion.
“Each collaborator had an important role as the person who listened to me, suggesting ideas and encouraging me,” Alexis says. “OIi Bayston, his job was the hardest, the record was two-thirds done, and we wrote three things from scratch in his studio, two of them are key singles from the records, one is a tribute to my friend Black Lodge [Black Lodge in the Sky] and supporting those in your life who are struggling.
“Oli was a key missing ingredient in the final record. Before I’d found him, there had been a fairly big chunk of time where I didn’t know how to finish the record or who to finish it with - or if I could.”
The music industry is also in a very different place to the one Alexis first entered with Hot Chip and their 2004 debut, Coming on Strong. Within an era of algorithms, music has to vie for our attention among myriad distractions.
“Let’s be honest, I’m in a privileged position, I have a band that has had some success, and that allows me to spend money on making a record that I want to make,” Alexis says. “But it’s hard to make the economics work - we just don’t have the same industry we once had and our country doesn’t have the same kind of support for the arts that you get elsewhere.”
The financial implications of music making puts pressures on today’s artists, particularly in how an album is presented. With more hurdles than ever to contest, it’s a creative urge that keeps Alexis looking to the future.
“I’m faced with some anxiety about whether I can keep doing this but the songwriting process keeps me going,” he states. “There is a space for records to exist, even if they are not commercial successes. So you want to keep at it. You want the music to be there for one person as much as a million but the kind of life it lives is beyond your control.”
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