Bleep

Any new Hot Chip material is something worth celebrating, but when the group are releasing their first new LP for four years you’ll have to excuse us for getting a little over-excited. And when that LP is a record as magnificent as A Bath Full Of Ecstasy - well, it’s party-time at Bleep Towers.

A Bath Full Of Ecstasy’s closest compatriot in Hot Chip’s roster is In Our Heads, another record that put the band’s love of golden-age house front and centre. As it was on the 2012 LP, many of the tracks on the band’s seventh album are anchored on sturdy four-to-the-floor grooves. Musically, Hot Chip are taking cues from In Our Heads’ open-hearted and chest-swelling moments - think ‘Flutes’, ‘Don’t Deny Your Heart’ and ‘Let Me Be Him’. Honed by producers Philippe Zdar (Beastie Boys, Phoenix) and Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, David Byrne), A Bath Full Of Ecstasy sounds like a blur of lovely memories, all of the best bits of your life clumped together in a dreamy fug and sung back to you in Alexis Taylor’s tender tenor.

Of course, the high-points wouldn’t be high without having experienced the lows. Lead single ‘Hungry Child’ features lyrics full of worry, but the track’s ever-crescendoing instrumental provides instant catharsis. It’s a huge and undeniable tune in the vein of Larry Levan’s ‘Stand On The Word’, and one that you can’t help but be swept up in. Other tracks reflect moments of strife and doubt - of faith, of love, of personal conviction - but these are always wed to beats so euphoric that they find peace as soon as they are vocalised. Forays into r&b, soul and synth-pop produce similar results.

A Bath Full Of Ecstasy is a record as fun, as uplifting, as ecstatic, as its title suggests.