Saturday evenings at SXSW are usually a disappointment. Everyone is tired, bands are weary, and lines seem to be at a peak. Last year, our Saturday was completely transformed when we attended Hot Chip's showcase at The Parish. Despite some equipment troubles, the band's mix of electronics, enthusiasm, and tough-guy lyrics had the crowd dancing and roaring approval to the point that the floor quaked. Since then, the group have won NME's single of the year for "Over And Over," been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize for their brilliant album The Warning, and come in at #3 on Austinist's Top Albums of 2006 poll.

Hot Chip return to Austin on Wednesday at Antone's as part of a brief series of Coachella warm-up gigs. We spoke with Hot Chip co-vocalist, songwriter, and synthesizer player Joe Goddard last week, who kindly told us about his hip-hop influences, meeting Bjork, and Hot Chip's love of our Whole Foods flagship store.

We last saw Hot Chip in Austin during SXSW 2006, where you became our favorite discovery of that year's festival. What has the band been doing lately?

Basically, we've been touring in Australia at Big Day Out - we were on the bill with Peaches, Spank Rock, and Diplo. We were hanging out with all of those guys, which was excellent. We did some karaoke with Peaches, and had some amusing nights out with Diplo. Since then, we've been trying to work on our next record and get songs finished. We've also been DJing quite a lot, and we've put together this DJ Kicks mix CD, which should be out in a couple of months. Also, I should probably mention that Al Doyle from our group has been playing guitar with LCD Soundsystem, so they'll probably be down in Texas at some point. So we've been doing a wide variety of things, and it feels nice to come back and play shows with Hot Chip again now.

How did you find the whole Austin SXSW experience during your 2006 visit? It can be overwhelming as a fan.

Yeah, I find it completely overwhelming. You know, we were at the festival the year before (2005) as well, and that year we did the classic thing of fitting in tons of shows, most of them quite small. We played four or five times (in the 2005 festival), and that tired us out completely. So last year, we kind of cut it down, and just did the Astralwerks showcase and the Pitchfork show, and that was a lot more manageable. We went out to try and see other bands, and it is a very intense festival. The venues are quite small, so you have to fight to get in to some of them. It's an incredible amount of fun, and Austin seems like a fantastic place, but it's a very, very tense time. And coming from England, you're constantly bombarded by people from the music business. You bump into 20 people a day.

It really does seem like the whole of the UK music business turns up here for that week!

Over here, it's like a massive party that you have to go to because there's so much excitement. I used to work in a record label before the band took off, and all the people I used to work with are always out there, and it's just a massive thing in the UK music calendar. And it's a great festival! You get the chance to see hundreds of new bands, so that's really good, but it's tiring. You really need a break after doing it. I'm actually looking forward to coming back to Austin when it's not the festival. We stayed with a lady from Austin last year in her house, and she was kind enough to put us up through the festival, and she and her boyfriend seemed like they both got angry when the town was invaded. They weren't so keen on the whole thing. So I'm looking forward to doing a show in a more normal way, and having a real gig with real fans, because SXSW is such an industry thing. I want to be more relaxed this time.

We read that the band became fans of our enormous Whole Foods flagship store while here....

Yeah yeah yeah! We went down there. I love those places - you get so much good stuff. I think we had that for dinner before going onstage last year - we got sushi and juice and loads of good things. I will definitely be paying a visit to the Whole Foods market again.

We'll be glad to have you back later this month. Turning back to the band, is new track "My Piano" indicative of the new album's style, or was it done specifically for DJ Kicks?

There are going to be tracks that sound something like that on the new record, and tracks that are quite heavy and rock-y, with some house like "My Piano" is...but that was a track we never really thought of as being part of the new record. It was just something we had been working on for a while on my computer, and it just seemed like the right track for DJ Kicks. So, the next record has some things like that, but also things very different to that. There are three or four songs on the next record that are very, very gentle and relaxed. They're inspired by folk music, basically. One way "My Piano" is kind of similar to the record is that there's a lot of real piano on the next album. A lot of them have real piano and they're quite quiet with some mellow synthesizers and some harmonies. So...there's a large part of the next album that's gentle, and less of this sort of boisterous dance music.

Is DJ Kicks an extension of the "Greco-Roman" DJ nights the band hosts, or does it have a different feel to it?

There are similarities with the Greco-Roman night, yeah. Some of the tracks on DJ Kicks are ones that are definite favorites at Greco-Roman, and that's been important particularly for me. That's the club night that I've been organizing with a couple of people that aren't in the band. It's kind of a side project. Alexis and myself did a live set at one of those shows and played some new tunes of ours, and people from the band have come down to them, so that's been an important thing we've been involved with. Those club nights have helped us to get the DJ Kicks mix together, but they are seperate, essentially.

You guys have been DJing quite a lot in Europe recently, moreso than doing live gigs, even.

We've been taking a break from playing live shows, but in those gaps, we've been filling them up with DJ gigs. What's good is that three or four of us out of the group DJ, so we can theoretically play like four different cities around Europe in one weekend, or even eight if we each play on Friday and Saturday! So we can really put our name around, and it's been a good way to make some extra cash as well.

You guys remix absolutely everything: we've seen blogs and Pitchfork showcase Hot Chip remixes of everything from Amy Winehouse to Junior Boys. Is there anyone you wish or even dream would remix something of yours?

Yeah, there are tons of people. The ones that initially come into my mind are massive producers like Georgio Moroder or Prince, Timbaland, R. Kelly would be fantastic, Rick Rubin, all of those kinds of legendary people. I would absolutely love to have any of them work on one of our songs. Phil Spector, even! These things are kind of unlikely to happen, but if you're talking about your wildest dreams, then...

It's good to have dreams and goals!

I think we'll make it our group's goal to have R. Kelly to do a version of one of our songs.

Some of the band attended school with Adem and Four Tet. Were there secret meetings where everyone listened to Kraftwerk? It's amazing that all of this musical talent was in a school class!

(Laughs) It was a very good music department at the school, but it was a totally normal, comprehensive school. But they had some good music teachers, and the music department had rooms available where bands could rehearse. There were amps you could use and everything. So we learned a lot from Kieran [Four Tet] and Adem and those guys - they were a couple of years ahead of us, so they would teach us various things and I would listen to records they recommended to me. We were all in various indie bands that used to play and rehearse at the school. When I was 13 or 14, I remember going down to the drama theatre where they held the concerts, and I saw Kieran and Adam playing Smashing Pumpkins covers...and Nirvana and grunge. I would be moshing at the front with all my friends! So that was totally essential to our musical upbringing, for myself, Alexis, and Owen. We all went to that school and were in the same year. It is kind of interesting that so many musicians have come out of there. I can't explain it, really, except that the school was quite happy to promote kids' being creative and making their own music. That was really helpful.

The Warning seemed to deconstruct and recontextualize a lot of hip-hop and R&B lyrics. What music do you listen to the most, or find yourself going back to?

Well, I do listen to a lot of old hip-hop, like Jay-Dee and the old Slum Village records, and the productions he did for De La Soul and Common. His collaborations with Midlib as well, which is another one of my favorite producers. I listen to those things a lot, and old Nas, or Wu-Tang Clan, EPMD, and Souls of Mischief. That was the first hip-hop that I was exposed to. I still love that music completely, and it has a very special place in my heart. At the same time, yesterday I bought the new R. Kelly record "I'm A Flirt", and there's a song on the next Hot Chip album that's kind of inspired by that. Just because I like the audacity of his lyrics - I find it really entertaining. And he has a beautiful voice as well. There are things I really like about new R&B - I think Ciara has a couple of excellent songs. But I don't listen to it as much as I used to a few years ago. I've been listening to a lot of house music and techno, partly because I've been DJing and playing that sort of music. So I've been learning about that and buying it. But all of the other music I mentioned is very dear to me.

What do you like best about living in London?

My favorite thing about London is something similar to the big American cities: there's a massive amount of different nationalities and cultures living in a small area, so you get an incredible amount of music styles, clubs, and influences. Hot Chip music is very much inspired by old rave music that was very London-based, like 2-step garage music. There's a whole history of London music that is a very strong part of Hot Chip in terms of the way we think about production and the rhythms and things. We're inspired by a lot of things that are from here. So the multicultural thing, really, and that spreads into things like the food you can eat, like having Jamaican or Japanese or Indian food to try, which might be similar to big US cities as well.

We lived in London in the late 90's, and are still nostalgic for the amazing music and theatre culture. There's a lot for Londoners to be proud of in that sense.

Yeah, I think it's something to be proud of - both the multiculturalism and the arts culture that's around you. I really like that about London. There are other things I'm not so keen on anymore. Five or ten years ago, I could never imagine moving anywhere besides London, but now I feel like I could move to the countryside and relax a little bit! (Laughs) Maybe that's just because I'm getting a bit older, but I'm still proud of those aspects of living in London.

Turning that last question around, do you have a favorite American city to visit when touring?

We've had great experiences in a lot of places like Philadelphia, because we have a good relationship with club promoter Dave P who puts on great shows there, so we're friends. New York is the place we've been to most, and that's where the DFA guys are, so we have a good 'family' of friends there. We haven't been to the South or Texas, really, just to SXSW a couple of times, so I'm looking forward to seeing those places when it's not a hysterical music festival. Hopefully we can walk around a bit and experience things in a more leisurely fashion. But we had fantastic Mexican food last time we were there. I've had a good time in a lot of American cities.

Finally, please tell us a story about something funny that's happeneed to you during your time in Hot Chip, be it an odd celebrity encounter, an overzealous fan, or anything else that strikes you.

There was a strange thing just last Monday! Bjork asked us to fly to Iceland to support her on the first date of her world tour. All of us in the band were nervous and kind of building ourselves up to it - and thinking 'what do you say when you meet Bjork?' It's like you've got to try and think of something witty, arty, and interesting. So I was thinking about that on the plane, and I tried to wear clothes that I thought would be cool and arty. And we got there, and I basically saw her for about two seconds in a corridor the whole time that we were there. I think she said 'hi' to me at one point, but I didn't really have the chance to respond before she ran away to get onstage. So I guess that's kind of a funny thing.

Thanks for talking with Austinist, Joe.

Hot Chip play Antone's on Wednesday, April 25th with support from Tussle. Tickets are still available at Frontgate Tickets.

[Hot Chip Official Site]
[Hot Chip MySpace]

Hot Chip image by Jason Manning courtesy of Astralwerks Records. Joe Goddard image via mecredis on Flickr.