Hot Chip "Made in the Dark"

If every time a bag of Skittles opened Hot Chip's music streamed from the ripped packaging riding rainbow-colored waves of sound, every toddler in earshot rejoicing, twitching in robotic unison, I wouldn't bat an eye. If precocious preschoolers made mixtapes of the Teletubbies at the pinnacle of their substantial psychosis, the melange of zips and clicks, hums, whirs and low-end rumbles that comprise Made In The Dark would be a natural fit.

Made in the Dark plays like a drug frenzy. After the opening track blossoms from a long whine into a pulsing harmony of short guitar licks and driving percussion, a noisy circus of effects melting atop, the mania lingers. The warbling, video-game transition into the second track, "Shake a Fist," sounds like an opening level theme ripped from the NES classic Double Dragon, and the ominous beat that emerges on the other side is pure, tribal-infused Mortal Kombat.

Hot Chip's synthetic compositions are invigorating, oddball fragments of abstraction. Repetitious volleys of vocals in ephemeral, ethereal wisps, often distorted behind the tinny veneer of computerized effects, and a multitude of subtle panned sounds reward headphone listeners. With occasional moments of calm proving smooth comedowns between blasts of adrenaline, Hot Chip shows a range and delicacy that too often escapes the battiest musicians. While the predominance of Hot Chip's time is spent ricocheting around the realms of noisy-dance and meth-tinged synth-pop, harnessing a very '80s vibe and then galloping across plains of indie rock and electronica, tracks like "In The Privacy of our Love," delve into the unexpected -- '60s soul in this instance.

Once the Skynet takeover is complete, and computers grasp the concept of leisure time, they'll discover the market for soundscape recordings: ambient recreations of various cyber-ecosystems. These collections of soothing cyber-sounds will be featured during non-prime hours of the machine-preferred equivalent of TV, some mindless pastime interrupted by the inane promotions of silky-voiced human slaves. Very quickly, the machines will realize that Made in the Dark is the only example of cyber-ambiance that need exist. At this epoch, Made in the Dark will become the bible. And, once the machines exhaust their stable of human slaves through their new favorite pastime, slow disembowelment in order to capture and digitize a range of pained screams for a universal database of sound effects to replace the familiar chimes and dings and "You've got mail"'s characteristic of human computer applications, Made in the Dark will be humanity's single surviving relic.

Finish Him!: Hot Chip - "Shake a Fist"

Check out Hot Chip at Astralwerks.