Joe Goddard

Emma Warren

Excellent, well we’ve got working microphones, which is always a good thing to have for our first lecture of Term Two here at Red Bull Music Academy.

Joe Goddard

Is it the first one?

Emma Warren

Yes, it is. Yesterday, we had introductions and we were listening to all the participants’ music. But the Term Two schedule starts right here, right now. The nice thing about having Joe Goddard from Hot Chip on the couch is that you don’t need to do the same introduction as with someone who’s perhaps well-known in their part of the world, but isn’t massively well-known everywhere. But Hot Chip have, perhaps bizarrely, become part of the pop firmament worldwide, as well as making sense in the niche music scenes that we all know and love. So, I guess, really we should say welcome to Joe Goddard [applause].

Joe Goddard

Hello.

Emma Warren

You’re a proper music enthusiast, aren’t you? You know how you see Elton John enthusing about the minimal techno things he loves, I can imagine you in your dotage still being interested in minimal techno or the UK bass culture things you love. Can you see that as a future for yourself?

Joe Goddard

Well, yeah. I don’t want to just sound like an advocate of London music, but I find London to be very inspiring constantly, particularly the last year or two, where there’s been a brilliant moment where people have given up on a lot of the rules of dance music, which is always a good thing. There’s still boring house, and a lot of dubstep records being made now are just following the rules, but a lot of people aren’t, in a really, really great way.

Ten years ago, you had 2-step music, and the big brothers of younger children were buying a lot of 2-step records, and those younger brothers are now at that stage where they’re producing things. The rhythms of 2-step and jungle are so ingrained in their minds from such a young age that they know all the rhythms and the bounce and the jerkiness, and the way they do the hi-hats so well, that now they’re not bound by the rules that were part of the game back then. They’re throwing in bits of reggae and techno and all different kinds of music to that music as well. I just think there’s a lot of good stuff going on, yeah.

Emma Warren

I remember hearing Kode9 saying something in a documentary about dubstep from maybe 2007, and he said the reason why dubstep makes so much sense to people and the reason why they’re being swept away by it is we’ve all grown up on breakbeats, we all understand it now. There was a point where that stuff sounded really odd and strange, but it really doesn’t any more, we’ve all grown up on breakbeats and bass culture.

Joe Goddard

I’ve heard Kode9 speaking about this and it’s something and it’s something I’ve seen journalists talking about on the internet, the hardcore continuum.

Emma Warren

The “’nuum.”

Joe Goddard

Right, and essentially that’s a very important part of UK music and music around the world, it goes back to the Jamaican music of the ’60s and ’70s. It’s become ingrained, this idea of bass music and the way it’s mutated has become part of our culture. In some parts of the world I go to DJ, places like Berlin, I’ve had experiences — maybe I was in the wrong club — where you can’t really veer away from the 4/4. Increasingly, in Berlin that’s changing, but you get some parties there where people really want techno, and that’s understandable. In London, the way you can switch between styles and people understand that. I guess, it’s because we had acid house and the beginning of jungle, and it made it into the pop charts and that kind of thing.

Emma Warren

I guess, another thing is a lot of people grew up listening to dance and rave music in the charts, they got their first dance hits on a hits compilation they got for Christmas.

Joe Goddard

That’s exactly what I got. At the time, those weren’t the tracks I was drawn to. I remember getting Now That’s What I Call Music! when I was about 12, I think it was No 14, and there were pop and rock hits on it, but there was also “Good Life” on it. At the time that wasn’t the track I would gravitate towards, but as it was a tape you’d have to listen to it loads of times. Now, when I look back on it, the synthesizers and the keyboard sounds on that track are things I absolutely love and I’m always searching for them on synthesizers, how did they do that? That was pop music.

Emma Warren

So the blueprint for the Hot Chip was there in Now 12 in an Inner City track.

Joe Goddard

There’s also that Nu Shooz track called “I Can’t Wait” that had a dog barking. I didn’t know what that track was for years, I must have heard it as a kid, and when we were making a track off Made in the Dark called “We’re Looking for a Lot of Love”, we had a sound in there that’s a synthesizer that sounds like a dog barking, and I said, “This sounds like a brilliant ’80s thing that I love,” and I couldn’t place it. Then I heard this track again. That must have gone into my mind when I was such a youngster, and was always there as something that I loved but couldn’t place, something that reminded me of that time.

Emma Warren

It’s interesting the way the brain processes information, because you only think you remember certain things, but actually you absorb everything that you’re around. I guess, that’s a good advert for immersing yourself in as much music as you can.

Joe Goddard

It happens when you’re not really in control of it, like it might be things you’re parents listen to in the car when you’re driving. My mum used to play Graceland by Paul Simon when I was a kid. That’s probably what happened with Vampire Weekend, they probably went on drives as kids with Graceland playing, and that’s their career now.

Emma Warren

So, any highlife for you?

Joe Goddard

Not so much, just the very pop tip of it.

Emma Warren

From your mum and dad’s cassettes in the cars to right now, where do you tend to get your music to listen to?

Joe Goddard

I go to Phonica, that’s a great shop in London. If you’re from other parts of the world, you should go down there.

Emma Warren

Because these people are from all over the world, tell us a bit about it. What is Phonica, where is it, and what’s interesting about that part of London for record shop buyers?

Joe Goddard

Phonica is on Poland Street in Soho, right next to Berwick Street and D’Arblay Street. This is an area that’s had a lot of record shops for as long as I can remember. It’s also an area that 25-30 years ago had a lot of hookers and strip shows.

Emma Warren

After-hours drinking places.

Joe Goddard

Yeah, it was a really seedy area. As a teenager, that was where me and people from my band would go up there every Saturday and go to Sister Ray and Selectadisc, which are indie record shops with a wide range of things. There’s also the Soul Jazz shop Sounds Of The Universe, which obviously has brilliant people working there who’ll help you. Phonica has only been there a few years, but this whole area is really deep in records. It’s also got Uptown Recordsand Black Market Records. As a teenager you could go down to Black Market and Ray Keith or Nicky Black Market would be DJing and would be selling people records. Sometimes Ray Keith would do a wicked mix and bring in some average jungle record, but mix it so well that all the teenagers would say, “Yeah, I want one of those, I want one of those”. They’d sell 20 copies of it, then get home and realize it didn’t sound quite so good on their belt-drive turntables.

Emma Warren

That’s because they were not Ray Keith.

Joe Goddard

Exactly. Now, shops like Black Market are selling funky and garage and dubstep still. It was a big shop for dubstep, Youngsta, I don’t know if he still works there but he used to, he was one of the first DJs at FWD>>, when it used to be at the Velvet Rooms, on Charing Cross Road when it first opened ten years ago. That’s deep in dance culture. Uptown Records is very important in garage and grime music. That area is good for records, and it still is with Phonica.

Emma Warren

That’s the special thing about record shops. I can’t speak about them elsewhere but I imagine the same kind of thing happens. As a music fan it gives you a strong sense of connectedness to hear some music playing in a club and then see those same DJs working in the record shop the next morning, or afternoon probably.

Joe Goddard

Yeah, there’d be genuine fans of Nicky Black Market going to see him, being able to communicate with him and ask him what records he’s playing and be part of the scene. There are ways of doing that with online culture now, with forums and maybe speak to DJs, Rinse FM, there are ways of contacting people.

Emma Warren

It’s not the same as buying a crap jungle record off Ray Keith, though.

Joe Goddard

No [laughs], but going back to your original question, I find that I buy a ton of music that I didn’t know anything about by going into Phonica – hopefully the good ones, not the bad ones they sell me. I went in there yesterday and spent a lot of money on new vinyl, new house records, new Theo Parrish things that have just come out. Some things I went in there knowing I wanted, others I just listened through a ton of stuff. That’s still an important way of finding music. I quite like to buy vinyl and then record it so that when I’m playing out I still have the sound of a needle playing, I like the sound of vinyl.

Apart from that, like other people I look online. I go to Fact Magazine, they have amazing strings of DJ mixes on there. I do a show on Ministry of Sound Radio with my friend Raf, who’s also a record obsessive. Ross Allen has a show on the same station, where I get tips for records. And then just being out. I obviously don’t go to clubs as much as I did as a teenager, because it’s become kind of my job, so I find it hard to get the motivation to go out when I’m not working. But that’s obviously the best place to hear new good stuff.

Emma Warren

It seems like there’s a kind of dancefloor, nightclub link through all the different things you’ve done. You’re in a band that makes music connected to dance music in a very in-depth way, it’s not just something you’ve dipped into. You DJ, you run clubs. Do you think that dancefloor perspective has been the driving force or the driving influence on the way you make music?

Joe Goddard

For me, Hot Chip music is very poppy in some ways. The songs are geared to being catchy in the way that pop music is. That’s something I love, from Phil Spector to Timbaland – I love the great tradition of pop music. But for me, these tracks always begin as drum machine beats and basslines, things I’m inspired and obsessed with in club culture. For me, it started with jungle, then went into garage, now I’m getting more into more old house and techno. But the initial inspiration is always dance music. Our latest single is “One Life Stand,” and it began with me trying to create drum rhythms that to me were exciting, that were inspired by techno and funky and things like that. That spark of excitement — this is funky, this is working, this rhythm is good — that often inspires the words and chord progressions and things. The way I usually work is by putting together drums and loops. When I feel that that’s funky and exciting, everything follows from that. It’s a massive obsession of mine, UK dance music and dance music from around the world.

Emma Warren

Can we have a listen to that and maybe you can talk us through it? Show us what you mean…

Joe Goddard

Yeah, I’ll play that track.

Emma Warren

And chuck a few CDs on the floor at the same time, it’s added value here.

(music: Hot Chip – “One Life Stand”)

Joe Goddard

That next little bit of music was written by Alexis. The thing between us is very collaborative. You might have heard some steel pans in there, which is a great old dude called Bravo, a Jamaican guy who’s played with people like Zongamin in the past, also played with Brian Eno in the ’70s. He’s got a long history of steel pans and he came in and played on three or four tracks on our records. It’s a mixture. We wanted to do something very much inspired by modern dance music but with all these other influences thrown in.

Emma Warren

With Hot Chip it seems like you’re all really into music, but there are areas of difference. Is it good to be around people that are drawing from different areas to you?

Joe Goddard

I think that’s a brilliant, brilliant thing. I watched the documentary about the German group Can, and they were talking about the fact that they came from very, very different places. Michael Karoli, the guitar player, was influenced by old gypsy music and guitar rhythms; Jaki Liebezeit, the drummer, came from a jazz background and then just decided he wanted to play this motorik style. The guys came from all different kinds of experimental music and together created something very, very unique.

With our group there are a few things we agree on. We all love Kraftwerk, we all love some bits of dance music, we all love some bits of folk music too. But there are a lot of times when we disagree quite strongly and finding collaborative solutions to those problems is quite exciting. It means someone can’t pin you down so easily. On stage, Felix, another member of our group, he does all the drum programming and things, he’s massively into techno. When he DJs it’s all minimal techno, so he uses things like the Machinedrum and he uses Ableton now, but the aesthetic of where he’s coming from is all modern techno music. For Alexis, that’s very far away from his comfort zone, when he DJs he’s very rarely going to play a techno record. But having the collision of techno with Alexis’s much more soul, folk music and old and new R&B, that collision causes some interesting things. That’s one of the great things about all you guys coming from different parts of the world and being here is that you can collaborate and come up with something totally crazy.

One thing I wanted to say is I’ve had this collaboration with Alexis for a lot of my life right now, 15 or 16 years, since we started going to clubs and then making music together. We started making music a really long time ago and having someone you can collaborate with is just a genius thing, I find it particularly useful when you’re creating a new piece of music for three or four hours, it feels good, you’ve got a vibe going, then sometimes my confidence just drops. I’m like, “Oh man, this sounds derivative, I’m not sure I can finish this.” Maybe it sits on your hard drive for a while, and you’re not sure what to do… having someone who can come in and say, “That is good, you need to work on that, finish that idea,” that’ll really give you an injection of confidence that is so good. Or they might take it somewhere completely different that makes it really fresh again for you. So, don’t be afraid to collaborate, it really ups the amount of music that you can finish, just having someone else’s perspective on it.

Emma Warren

You just mentioned that you two have been making music together a long time, because you went to school together. The thing people tend to know about you is that you went to school with Burial and Four Tet and The xx also went there and a couple of members of The Maccabees. But I think the most interesting thing about the guys who went to your school is DragonForce, the power metal band, also went there and he’s more successful than any of you.

Joe Goddard

Yeah, he’s sold eight-million records. It’s a dude called Herman Li, he was in the same year as Kieran [Hebden] and Adem.

Emma Warren

That’s Kieran Hebden and Adem from [Fridge].

Joe Goddard

Yeah, he was two years older than me so I was a little younger, but my memory of him is that every time you went into the music department he’d be sitting outside in the corridor practicing his – what did they call it? – shredding, every day. Then, later on, he won the Best Young Shredder at the Kerrang! Awards [laughter]. So, that was good, it obviously paid off. Kieran used to be a sick lead guitarist as well, the first time I saw him play music he was in a rock band making Smashing Pumpkins covers. He was a great guitarist and they used to trade licks or whatever. Herman was always dressed totally in black with long hair covering his face, you could never see his face. He’d just be playing his guitar all the time. People always go on about the trendy music coming out of the school, but he’s absolutely smashed it with the number of records he sold, particularly in America.

Emma Warren

Did you realize you’d unintentionally unmasked Burial, because you were the first person in public to say who he was? I think it was an interview in The Independent newspaper and you said, “Oh Burial, he was in the year above me at school.” Then suddenly the world discovered who he was.

Joe Goddard

Yeah, I never mentioned his name, I knew he didn’t want people to say that. But I said he went to school with us, yeah. I kind of wish I hadn’t now, because that one thing was just repeated all over the place, because it was the only bit of information known about Burial. It was a good lesson to learn, the press will just jump on something like that massively. I was just asked the question, “What musicians went to your school?” I said he did, as well as all the other musicians who were there. Now a bit more is known about him. He was a very quiet guy at school, I wasn’t particularly a friend of his, I was more friends with other friends of his.

Emma Warren

I think this was in February that The Independent newspaper came out and three months later The Sun was still saying, “Who is Burial? Is it Fatboy Slim?”

Joe Goddard

Yeah, there was a crazy list of dance producers they thought it was.

Emma Warren

The thing about your school that is most interesting is that it seemed to promote creativity within a formal setting. Often schools are about squashing creativity. There’s a very interesting lecture on TED from a guy who was the chief inspector of schools, and he did this lecture about why schools kill creativity. Interesting lecture, if anyone’s interested in pedagogy, but it definitely seemed to be about positive creativity.

Joe Goddard

I don’t want to suggest this school was some kind of incredible academy of the arts. It was a normal London comprehensive school, but it had some good teachers that gave you the opportunity to do creative things, if you wanted to. If you wanted to form a band, there was always a room you could practice in. One of the old, crazy art teachers, Mr Tucker, he told me that he’d told some of the kids to form a free jazz band in the school, he played them some records and told them they should go and make some music. Apparently, they had one rehearsal, threw the drum kit out the window and then quit. That was their history. They took the lessons of free jazz on board really quickly.

Emma Warren

That was well free. I remember Dennis Bovell telling me when I interviewed him for something about cutting houses, he was talking about when he first made music. He commandeered the school music room, got a geography teacher who played flute in, set up some tape-loop around some brooms and nicked a sample off “Young, Gifted and Black” – this was in 1968 – and got the teachers to play “Guantanamera” over it. That was his first dubplate that he did, he cut it and sold it and got like £3 for it, enough to go out for a week, which he did, I think. Sometimes, those teachers can come in handy.

Joe Goddard

Those teachers were great, they were really inspiring. A lot of the people from that school, I’m still in contact with them, a lot of cool people.

Emma Warren

But, I guess, this also must have been the time when you started going out to clubs. I know you went to Metalheadz. Was that the first club you went to? Probably not.

Joe Goddard

The first club I went to, I don’t even remember. There was Metalheadz and there was one called Anokha, which was Talvin Singh’s club.

Emma Warren

So those are the first proper clubs, but what are the first real clubs? I know the first club I went to was Rage, but that wasn’t the first club I went to, it was an acid house club called Zen’s in Dartford. Not quite as glamorous.

Joe Goddard

At that time in my life, the two things I was getting into simultaneously were grunge music and jungle music. So the first clubs were probably bad indie nights at the Borderline. The first gig I ever went to was Kieran’s cousin playing in a bad grunge band there. The second gig was Blur playing at Alexandra Palace in the middle of Britpop. But soon after that Metalheadz became an obsession of the older kids at my school. You’d come in on a Monday, and they’d be talking about the Saturday night or the Friday night before. The first couple of times I went I was so young, I wasn’t doing drugs at that point. We could get drinks sometimes, but we were very worried about being found out for being under 18. I think sometimes I’d just fall asleep through tiredness, I didn’t have anything to keep me up. Other nights would be amazing, that would be where I first heard things like Photek.

Emma Warren

So you would be the sleepy kid in the corner… asleep by the bassbin.

Joe Goddard

Definitely. There was one massive Warp Records night at the Rocket in Holloway Road, where they had Aphex Twin DJing and Squarepusher playing live, and all these people I was massively excited about. I fell asleep standing up, I was waiting so long for them to come on at four in the morning.

Emma Warren

Are you a narcoleptic?

Joe Goddard

No, it’s just hard sometimes.

Emma Warren

I have to say ,I’ve never fallen asleep in a nightclub. You see it sometimes and it’s always perplexed me. I can understand how you can pass out – obviously, I’ve never done that either – but not how you can fall asleep. I had this mate called Dawnie, and she would always fall asleep in nightclubs.

Joe Goddard

Usually, it’s right by the bass speakers too.

Emma Warren

Maybe it’s a kind of soothing thing.

Joe Goddard

Like being in the womb?

Emma Warren

Maybe. But in a bigger way, what did jungle do for you?

Joe Goddard

Jungle was my introduction to dance music. It started off with Metalheadz but quickly became Andy C Ram Trilogy stuff and old Zinc records like “Super Sharp Shooter.” That was played at every house party I went to around that time. It’s incredible that Zinc is here today, the creator of so much of London’s best dance music over 15 years, from that to all the garage stuff. He’s inspired me for a long time, just the funkiness of his basslines is overwhelming. I still play out things like “Go DJ” and “138 Trek.” So his records and others like Ganja Kru are all amazing. It was just the gateway into dance music, the first drugs, the first pills, the beginnings of my understanding of breakbeats and the way they work. The funkiness of those old drum & bass basslines is still the thing that I try to get into my productions, the swing, the groove of it, that’s still what I’m looking for. Those were the first records I ever tried to mix. My Friend Rob literally did have old belt-drive turntables where you had to start the record a bar before you wanted it to come in because it would take that long to start up.

Emma Warren

But in a way it’s good practice to start on crap equipment because it means your skills have got to be up there, rather than learning to drive in an automatic or something.

Joe Goddard

When you read about old New York clubs, the old disco clubs, people were using belt-drive turntables and mixing records that weren’t made using computers or drum machines, so the tempo is all over the place. If you can mix those, moving onto Technics and records made on Cubase is child’s play. I guess, now you don’t have to mix records any more if you’re using Ableton. So, maybe that’s a skill that’s not really necessary anymore. But I still find it really exciting seeing records and mixing well.

Emma Warren

Who’ve you seen lately that’s really inspired you from that point of view?

Joe Goddard

Well, the person who’s really inspired me doesn’t actually mix records so much, but Theo Parrish blows my mind completely. He’s one of the most inspiring figures in music at the moment. I saw him at [the now shuttered London club] Plastic People last year, he had a residency once a month, it started off with only one turntable working and the lights were on. He was talking to the crowd and playing records before he really got into it. He was, “I’ve only got one turntable working” and I said to him, “Maybe we can just have a little talk in between, a question and answer session.” He was like, “No! Tonight we’re gonna play music.” He really got into it. He started off playing like 50-60 bpm old soul music and old R&B, moved up through the whole spectrum, slowly increasing the tempo to the end of the night, really banging techno, and just so many inspiring records. It’s his passion that comes through when you see him, he knows the records and loves them so much. He’s not afraid to play old records that are very jazzy with big, long saxophone solos and things. I just think of him as a real beacon of passion and love of music at the moment.

Emma Warren

And what do you think about the authorities plans to put Plastic People’s future in jeopardy?

Joe Goddard

It’s terrible, I just got that email the other day. Are there Red Bull events there this month? Yeah, it’s just one of the best clubs in London, everyone should go if you haven’t had a chance. It’s dark, it’s small, there are speakers around the walls, which the owner, Ade, tunes so that they sound beautiful. I had lots and lots of great nights in there. I went to see Trevor Jackson in there about 12 years ago. I used to find him one of the most inspiring DJs, the way he moved through different genres and seeing him in that environment was fantastic. I’ve seen a lot of good things there over the years. Alexis and myself DJed for Nadia’s old night, Our Disco. It’s been the scene of a lot of amazing stuff. Attica Blues, who used to be on Mo’ Wax had a residency there, and the amount of good stuff that goes on there is just phenomenal. It would be a terrible, terrible thing if it closed.

Emma Warren

I second that. I think everyone seconds that. One of the participants from last term, a guy called Axel Boman — he hadn’t been to the UK before — said, “I walked in and it was like a prototype for a nightclub. This is how it should be.” It’s certainly a place built by people who like nightclubs for people who love nightclubs. Proper clubs.

Joe Goddard

It’s just taking the care and attention over the soundsystem. I think some new clubs put in an incredible soundsystem, but then don’t actually tune it. Maybe it sounded good when they first put it in, but they don’t actually know how to keep it sounding good. It’s a very specialist knowledge that he has, and he loves it.

Emma Warren

You’ll see that at some events, lots of soundsystems being looked after, people with tool belts making sure everything is working, not just that they don’t all fall over.

Joe Goddard

If you go to Notting Hill Carnival, one of the big soundsystems there, I spent two days at the Trojan Soundsystem last time, and they’ll be people walking around constantly checking all different points in the street, that the sound is good.

Emma Warren

So do you have people with belts at your Greco-Roman parties?

Joe Goddard

We just have Raf drunkenly fumbling with the EQs for the speakers.

Emma Warren

So, tell us about the parties you run, because some of them have been memorable, or unmemorable for the people who enjoy them too much. Lots of people here might know about what you do, but they won’t necessarily know about the rootsy, street-level stuff you do. Can you explain why you run parties and what they’re like?

Joe Goddard

We run parties, just because it’s the best way to ensure that you get music all night that you enjoy. You want to create an atmosphere, an audience who are into what you do. I found as I started to DJ more around Europe that sometimes you’d have amazing experiences where the vibe is totally right for you, but sometimes you’d turn up and it’s totally not your thing – the audience is there to see some really noisy, aggressive, electro stuff and that’s not what you want to do. You should stick to your guns in those situations and do your thing, but sometimes it can just be a bad fit.

So, we wanted to throw parties that we could control, and where we could DJ all night. You know on old records you’d see that someone had done a mix specifically for a club, I saw one recently that was on a Joe Claussell record designed for a specific club. That’s a fantastic thing, when you can be like, “I know the audience at that place and the soundsystem.” That can be inspiring making that record. You can be, “The bass needs to be like this for that club, I need to drag that section out a bit longer, because the breakdown should be here and then the vocals should be here.” You know the audience and the way they like to dance, the feelings they like to feel.

I wanted to get into a position where it would inspire you to make records, because you know they would work at the club, so we’ve been doing parties trying to create that kind of thing. It’s tough, it’s tough putting on parties in London. There are a million other things going on, so you don’t know if you’re going to get 500 people or 200 people. There might be an amazing party down the road and it screws up your plans, and you lose money. We’ve lost money on a lot of parties, made money on a few. But, I guess, if you’re obsessed with club culture, it’s a fun thing to do.

Emma Warren

You talked there about making clubs for records. No, the other way around [laughs]. Do you have something with you that you can play us, maybe something off [Harvest Festival], your solo album, or maybe another Hot Chip bit?

Joe Goddard

Yeah. My solo album, not all of them are perfect for the club, but they’re all designed to encompass the different kinds of music I wanted to go into the club. I’ve got the vinyl here. I’ll play little bits of two tracks because they show different sides of what I wanted to do. The first track is nice for a summery kind of day, it’s kind of mellow and I was interested in old house music and the kind of melodies that Aphex Twin uses, the synthesizers, the beauty he gets into some of his records. This is one tune I made recently.

(music: Joe Goddard – “Apple Bobbing”)

Joe Goddard

So that’s the first one off my solo record, it’s just a mellow house record. The drums are made with this DrumTraks drum machine I bought and there is also a modular synthesizer making the melody towards the end, the kind of solo-y melody.

Emma Warren

What were you using?

Joe Goddard

It’s a Doepfer simple modular system, I think it’s called A-100. I got it in a place in LA called Analogue Haven that has tons of different modules made by Doepfer and different companies. You go along there and tell them the kind of synthesizer sound you want to make and they’ll put together the right synthesizer for you. You tell them how many oscillators you want and what sort of filters, all the different things you can do, and they’ll hook it all up for you. Quite frankly, I don’t know anything about electronics, and doing it myself wouldn’t go well. So, I let them do it.

Emma Warren

You’ve got quite a collection of bits. There was an interesting documentary on television recently called Synth Britannia and they linked all the original synth-pop people and linked them to all these ideas of science fiction and the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. And a lot of people in the UK saw this stuff first on a science show called Tomorrow’s World. Obviously, you’re not of that generation, you’re a generation later. Do you remember a time when you first saw synthesizers and thought they were interesting?

Joe Goddard

I don’t really know if there was a concrete moment. As we were speaking before, there were records like “Good Life” that filtered their way into your consciousness without you even knowing it. As an early teenager, my dad was a film editor, used to edit pop videos, used to work with The Cure for years and years, edited something like 20 videos for them. So, as a kid I was hearing their records from a young age, and they used lots of synthesizers in quite a good way – maybe similar to Hot Chip, very poppy.

I guess synthesizers slowly worked their way in, but I guess, a big moment for me was later in my life, with Hot Chip, we started off making things at school with acoustic guitars, and we had one crappy organ, a tiny little organ my technology teacher gave me. We didn’t really know much about synthesizers, but our music started to evolve from using acoustic guitars. We started to be more inspired by the modern R&B around at the time, people like Destiny’s Child and producers like Darkchild, who was making incredible stuff. I guess, synthesizers became a bigger part of my consciousness around then when I was trying to recreate stuff like that. At that point we used to go to charity shops looking for keyboards and things, we bought this one by an Italian company called Teisco, who only made one or two synthesizers, and the rest of the time they made kettles.

Emma Warren

[Affects Italian accent] “I know, let’s not make kettles, let’s make a synthesizer…”

Joe Goddard

[Affects Italian accent] “Let’s make something funky.” We used that for years, that was the only synthesizer we had, I used to play that and do the basslines for Hot Chip live. Apart from that, it was poor-quality, mostly Casio keyboards we used to in those days, because you could get them in charity shops.

Emma Warren

But then, what would you do to them to make them sound better? Because, obviously, if you listen to them raw, they sound like £30 keyboards.

Joe Goddard

They still sound like £30 keyboards in our music. There’s one old Casio called the MT-70, and for the first two of our albums that’s maybe on every song. Actually, I’ve got a track that uses it a lot that we can play. It’s just really gentle organ sounds we thought were pleasant. I’ll just play a track that used it a lot. All of these keyboard sounds are just from this rubbish Casio.

(music: Hot Chip – “The Warning”)

Emma Warren

Can I just say that’s my favorite Hot Chip record. I just love the gentle menace of someone saying gently, “Hot Chip will break your legs / Snap off your head.”

Joe Goddard

I just found that quite funny. But the point to make about that is that the only two keyboards on there are an old Italian Teisco that we got from a secondhand shop and a Casio that we got from a secondhand shop. Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention, you may only be able to get your hands on something cheap and shitty, but you can make it work. Even the bassline is made on a Casio (laughs), I wouldn’t do that now. We didn’t know any better at that point, we didn’t know that it’s good to use like a Moog for a bassline. You can end up with a sound that’s more unusual when you don’t know the rules. That’s important to keep in mind. I know a lot of you are successful and don’t need me to tell you, but it’s good to have that naivety is good in your music. You don’t always need to be buying the latest synthesizers with the heaviest bass sound. You can use whatever you use and it’s good to be using something different to what everyone else is using.

Emma Warren

I fully hear what you’re saying, but I imagine now you have some other equipment in your arsenal. What other synthesizers or bits of kit have you got that you’re particularly happy about?

Joe Goddard

A lot of people don’t hold them in particularly high regard, but I end up using the Arturia versions of old synthesizers. They do an emulation, a VST instrument of an old Moog modular that I just use constantly. To really geek out about it, on the Moog Modular they’ve asked different synth maestros to create patches for it, and one of the dudes from Yellow Magic Orchestra – this incredible old Japanese synth-pop group, really beautiful records that are held in very high regard by Carl Craig and all kinds of techno masters – and the dude from their group has made some patches, I think his second name is Matsutake. I use a certain one that he’s done for lots and lots of different things. There are lots of things you can control because it’s a modular synth, there are loads of parameters you can mess with and turn these sounds into really interesting, unusual things. I always tweak them, they don’t sound exactly how I want when I bring up the patch, but they’re wicked, we always use them on things we do. I think the synthesizers on the “Apple Bobbing” track I played come from that guy. I think it’s important to mix what you do. If you’re going to use VST instruments that’s cool, they can do their thing, but it’s good to then have live playing as well, and using modular synthesizers and doing different things. I think the music comes to life a little bit more when you’re not just relying on VST instruments that are just within your computer.

Emma Warren

So, we’re coming back to having a drum machine and a drummer.

Joe Goddard

Yeah.

Emma Warren

I understand that with the Harvest Festival album, you were sampling things off an 808 and recording it onto cassette. Is that right?

Joe Goddard

Yeah, that’s correct. When you record drums or anything onto tape it introduces natural compression, the tape naturally compresses the sounds. I wanted a little bit of that idea, the tape gives the drums a tiny bit of distortion in a nice way, and a bit of crunch that makes the drums sound a little less standard. A little older as well. With this solo record, I wanted to make something that did reference ’80s electro and house and [thought] that would be a good way of doing that. I wanted to limit my palette a bit as well, so I tried to use that particular drum sound on a lot of the tracks and the modular synths for a lot of the synthesizers. I tried to keep it to that, so the record might have some sonic uniformity.

Emma Warren

Is it this thing of being analog in a digital world, being into technology but liking sometimes to take things back to a slightly old-fashioned way of doing things?

Joe Goddard

I think on certain tracks you want to reference older sounds and other tracks you want to reference modern sounds. Sometimes that helps, certain songs you want to give the feeling of a certain age. But with Hot Chip, we just want the best of everything. We’re really interested in new synthesizers. The guy who runs Sequential Circuits is called Dave Smith and he’s been designing synthesizers for years and years, made this Drumtraks one I keep talking about that I bought. He also made the Prophet, which is a milestone in synthesizers, a really beautiful sound. I have one of those, an old Prophet, then he made the Prophet 5, which is an absolutely beautiful synthesizer used by pretty much everybody. Now, he’s done even more incredible synths like the Prophet 8 and the Poly Evolver, which we use both of when we play live. He actually comes to our shows when we go to San Francisco, shows us what products he’s making.

Emma Warren

So you’ve become pals?

Joe Goddard

Yeah, but he still doesn’t give us them for free [laughter]. He gives us a little discount sometimes.

Emma Warren

What happens when you hang out with him?

Joe Goddard

It gets geeky very quickly. He’s a really nice guy and his daughter comes to see us DJ. If you go to his website, there’s a picture of Felix holding one of his new synthesizers, really happy. I just wanted to make the point that you shouldn’t be limiting yourself to only new or only old equipment. Just find things you like and explore them. It could be old, new, cheap or expensive. I find myself sometimes buying new music magazines and there’s pressure to keep up, buy more equipment, but I find that you get the best results by knowing a piece of equipment back to front, really getting inside it, whether it’s a sequencer you use, a synthesizer, an effects pedal. Knowing it back to front means you can make weird things people haven’t heard before, and you’re not relying on the boring preset sounds.

Emma Warren

It’s interesting that you can get status anxiety reading tech magazines.

Joe Goddard

I definitely do, all the time like, “Maybe I should buy a new compressor or something.”

Emma Warren

Aah! Anyone feeling status anxiety might want to check out Alain De Bolton, philosopher and writer. He wrote an interesting book on it. Don’t give in, don’t give into it. Or to paraphrase ’90s house music, do what you feel.

Joe Goddard

Just remember a lot of older music is made on four-track, with people bouncing down tracks constantly, making decisions early on, “Alright, the bass is going to have to stay like this from now on, because I’ve got to bounce it down to another track, so I can free up a track to do the vocals.” Sometimes it’s good to limit yourself and make decisions early on in the process.

Emma Warren

You’ve just had a Hot Chip album out. What’s the next thing for the band?

Joe Goddard

We’re just on tour now. We just toured the UK, finishing on Saturday, then we go back out on Friday night, playing in Amsterdam first, then Brussels and France and Germany and a lot of festivals during the summer. Then, after that, we don’t have any plans.

Emma Warren

So when you’re touring does that mean the other stuff – writing, coming up with new ideas – doesn’t really happen? Do you write when you’re on tour or do you wait until all that madness is over and you’re back home and can sit down and start something new?

Joe Goddard

I actually take just my laptop, that’s the only kind of music-making stuff I take, my laptop with Cubase. If I have a few hours, then I sit down. Sometimes after shows, you play for an hour-and-a-half and that can spark off a new idea, when you play directly after the show. You hear about Jay-Z having a wicked recording studio in the back of his tour bus. We don’t have anything like that, but I’ve got my laptop and can sketch out an idea.

Emma Warren

At least you’re not catching a train. Again, just watching that synth documentary yesterday and it was all people in Depeche Mode, and they were performing on Top of the Pops and had to get the train from Basildon to Top of the Pops. They were like, “Yeah, we got the train to Fenchurch Street.” Then, when they went on the underground they were carrying their synthesizers with them. Apparently, Vince Clarke had the heaviest.

Joe Goddard

We used to do that for a long, long time. We had our backpacks with our Casios wrapped up in towels, going to Germany to support Faithless or whoever. Luckily, those days are gone for a little while.

Emma Warren

What’s going to be happening with the label?

Joe Goddard

The next thing for our label, we’re working with a guy called Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, we’ve put out one 12” by him. There’s going to be another EP soon, he’s just finishing it shortly. This guy called Drums Of Death, we’re really excited about. This guy, actually he has a live band now of three people, but he was working just with his laptop for a long time. He has his face painted like a voodoo priest, a kind of skull make-up. That’s going to be happening, then after that, we’re just looking at other things to release at the moment.

Emma Warren

I’ve got an answer in my head, but I’ll ask you the question. Why? Not why, we know why, but they’re seems to be a bit of a theme around Greco-Roman artists. What is it that tends to make an artist appealing to you from the point of view of wanting to put out their records?

Joe Goddard

I think it’s two things. Often, the artist we’re looking at is someone who’s playing in clubs using Ableton with one small MIDI controller, but essentially, it’s just one person doing all they can to make an exciting live show. Often, the people we’ve signed have been people who’ve done more or dressed up to make the show more entertaining. That’s something I’ve been interested in for a while. When Hot Chip were making more dance music, we really didn’t want to go down the route of just doing a laptop show with a bald dude bobbing up and down. We wanted to make it exciting somehow. We’re looking for people who are doing that. Also, the music we’re putting out has some relation to London bass culture in a way, whether it’s garage or house or more jungle influences. Like this Dinosaurs guy is obsessed with old jungle and the most recent party we had, he played an incredible jungle set. So yeah, there’s always a connection with that kind of rudeboy spirit in the music.

Emma Warren

You mentioned at the very beginning this project you’re doing with Raf as 2 Bears. Obviously, you DJ and you’ve got the radio show, but what’s going to be the musical output?

Joe Goddard

The 2 Bears thing is really going back to a period just before UK garage when people were bringing old American garage records, Todd Edwards, MK, Masters at Work, and making music inspired by that. I’ve got one track by us, is it worth playing it?

Emma Warren

Yeah, before you do can you tell us why you call yourselves 2 Bears?

Joe Goddard

Because we’re both big hairy dudes. That’s basically it.

(music: 2 Bears – “Be Strong” / applause)

Emma Warren

Definitely channeling early ‘90s house music there. That’s a statement, not a question [laughs].

Joe Goddard

In London, recently there’s been this big disco resurgence and I think that’s moving on to early house music again.

Emma Warren

Is it going to get all Strictly [Rhythm] again?

Joe Goddard

Yeah, I think there’s a passion and urgency in that music, I think the groove is really good when you get to that New York house music – there’s a simplicity to it, which I find really good.

Emma Warren

It’s definitely nice going back to some of those labels and listening to things like Nu Groove and realizing how broad it was as a label. Whenever you listen to those records, they don’t sound like you think they should’ve sounded. That’s one of the things about music culture, there’s always something new to discover and at different times it’s always going to sound different because you’re hearing it with today’s ears. Before we start disappearing off into conversation among ourselves, I think we should hand it out to you guys and see if you’ve got questions for Joe. I know you all do, because if you don’t, there’ll be problems. I’ll come and snap off your head. Who’s first?

Audience member

Hello, I’m from Portugal, and I know Greco-Roman has done stuff with Buraka Som Sistema. How did it happen?

Joe Goddard

Alex, the guy I do Greco-Roman with, had been a fan of theirs for a long time. We’d seen them at Fabric shortly before we signed them and just found them to be very exciting. On a more practical level, there was a connection between the people that were managing them and the people we were working with. We felt there was a connection in terms of rhythms and garage things we were working with. I did a remix of that track and we tried to bring it more into the Greco-Roman sound, and it worked quite nicely, it was just a different aspect. What they do, the kind of rhythms they use, it’s obviously a rhythm that’s recurring in a lot of club music around the world at the moment, whether it’s a little bit slower in funky or a lot slower in reggaeton. Or I went to a little festival in Africa last year...

Emma Warren

Where was that?

Joe Goddard

In Malawi, the Lake Of Stars thing. On the radio going to the festival, all the music had that same rhythm [imitates beat] that you find in all this different club music. So I just found it exciting and interesting that that’s going on all around the world in these different places. So I was into that from the start with them.

Audience member

Hello, Andrew from Canada. I’m just wondering what kind of considerations you make when making music for a vocalist versus when you’re not.

Joe Goddard

You mean, like whether to use a vocalist?

Audience member

No. Obviously, when you’re writing for Hot Chip, there’s a particular vocalist that you’re creating the music for. Maybe you don’t have a particular project in mind when you start to write, but I’m wondering what sort of production considerations you may have when making music that’s strictly a club track without wall-to-wall vocals versus making a Hot Chip track.

Joe Goddard

I don’t really know if I do consider things differently. Essentially, things become Hot Chip tracks if I make some music and Alexis is into it, then he’ll add some vocals. That’s generally the way we do things. Sometimes things are just written by Alexis and more produced by me, or it can be a really collaborative effort in terms of writing. But essentially, if I start to make something and Alexis hears it and likes it, then that’ll become Hot Chip. If it doesn’t become Hot Chip, then it might become something for me as a solo thing, or it might become a 2 Bears thing.

I have to admit that consideration of where things are going does start to come into my mind when I’m starting to make a beat, generally about three or four hours after I’ve started. “OK, what project is this gonna be for and does that make a difference?” But, I guess, I try not to let that affect me too much, I just take inspiration from what I’m doing and try to finish it in the freshest, most exciting way that I can think of to finish it, and then see if a particular vocalist is into it.

Looking at it from another perspective, when we’re actually making a Hot Chip record, when we’re in the studio, you’re trying to leave space in terms of frequencies for the vocalist’s vocal style and vocal range. Alexis has quite a soft falsetto voice, so you can’t have too many synthesizers in that range because it’s going to be difficult to mix and difficult to find a space for him to sing in. But that’s more when we’re finishing a track together, if you’re going to add a new synth part, try to keep it higher frequency or lower frequency and let the vocal be in the place that it should be.

Emma Warren

OK, we’ve got time for a couple more.

Audience member

Hi, I’m from Jennifer and I’m from Los Angeles. You said earlier that you grew up listening to jungle, that was your first introduction to dance music. But you also said that you’re delving back more into early house music. That being said, there’s almost like a theoretical statement that music is cyclical, in which old styles come back. Do you think the way you’ve gone back – and now that’s influencing your current music – do you think that statement has legitimacy, at least in so far as you’ve been making and listening to music?

Joe Goddard

Yeah, I think that statement has a lot of legitimacy. One of the reasons why I’m listening to old house music more is you’ve had other styles of dance music thrust in your face quite a lot. There was the whole Ed Banger sound, which was quite noisy. Some of those records were great, others were a little too much for me, a little too rock-influenced. Maybe that’s because we were touring a lot of festivals and you’d always hear it.

If you’re hearing something all the time, you want something different. I think I’ve been moving back to a more subtle, more groovy, less aggressive US house sound. So, in terms of cycles, that obviously influenced my decision. I don’t think that’s the only reason why you look at a period and try to revive things, I think it’s more personal influences and what you’re feeling at any one time. I guess, those feelings come from somewhere in terms of what’s going on in dance music right now.

Audience member

Thank you.

Emma Warren

Anyone else? While we’re waiting, I’ve got another question: When you said your dad was making videos, does that mean you were hanging out with The Cure when you were a kid?

Joe Goddard

I never hung out with them, no. My dad just used to bring the tapes home. I was properly little.

Audience member

OK, I can speak now? Hi, I’m Alberto from DC, and I was just wondering have you ever worked with Mos Def)? Because that last track you were playing, I could just hear Mos Def jumping in and singing something.

Joe Goddard

I’ve never really had the chance to work properly with a successful rapper. I’ve been working on a project with a young rapper from London called Dels, making hip-hop music. But I love working with hip-hop vocals, I recently remixed a track by Kool Keith, he’s one of my favorite rappers of all time, so I really enjoyed it.

Emma Warren

Which one was that?

Joe Goddard

It’s a track called “Drugs”, where he just goes off on lots of different anecdotes, hanging out with James Brown and taking amphetamines, different kinds of drug stories. It’s a really wicked record. But I’ve never been in a studio with anyone like that, I’d love to. Mos Def’s first records on Rawkus were really big records for me, “Universal Magnetic,” his first single, was totally incredible. But I don’t know how to get into the world of those kinds of rappers, I don’t know the people who move in those circles or have those kinds of connections. Hopefully, one day I’ll have the chance to.

Audience member

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Do you have that “Drugs” track on you by any chance?

Joe Goddard

I don’t have it on me but I can send it to you if you give me your email.

Emma Warren

And if anyone has any questions but is feeling a bit shy, are you around for a little bit?

Joe Goddard

For a few hours, yeah.

Emma Warren

So you can just come and ask Joe directly. So unless anyone else has a burning question they’d like to ask right now, or forever hold your peace, I think we should say thank you to Joe Goddard.

[applause]