The Making of THE WARNING by Hot Chip - featuring Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard

Dan Nordheim (0:00)

You're listening to Life of the Record, classic albums told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

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Hot Chip officially formed in the year 2000 by Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor. The two of them had met years ago in secondary school in southwest London and began working on music together. While studying at different universities, they continued to collaborate and started releasing their music. One of their releases caught the attention of Moshi Moshi Records, who signed them to a deal. Their debut album, Coming on Strong, was released in 2004

Around this time, they added other band members, including Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin. For their second album, they signed a deal with EMI Records. The Warning was eventually released in 2006

In this episode, for the 20th anniversary, Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard reflect on how the album came together. This is THE MAKING OF THE WARNING.

Alexis Taylor (2:44)

My name is Alexis Taylor, and I'm talking about the Hot Chip album, THE WARNING, which came out 20 years ago in 2006

I think of THE WARNING as definitely something of a high point. I don't go back and listen to it all of the time now, but I think that we really connected with a lot of people through that music, and it was something of a breakthrough record for us. And yeah, I just feel like it is definitely an important stage in our career, there are other highlights, there are other things that I remember on other records, but without THE WARNING happening in that way, and without us being given the freedom we were given to make that record and without us putting a bit of pressure on ourselves to make something better than the first album that would really follow it well, I don't think we would be where we are today.

Joe Goddard (4:12)

Hi, you're listening to Joe Goddard from Hot Chip. Within Hot Chip, I'm a producer, and I do a little bit of singing as well. I mean, Alexis and I became friends very soon after we joined this secondary school, Elliott School in Putney in Southwest London. So we became friends at the age of 12 or around then. Initially, our friendship was, we ate our packed lunch together, ate our sandwiches at lunchtime, and played football together.

Realized that we were both into WWF wrestling, and very much like young teenage boy stuff. But Alexis was already a music obsessive, and I was as well.

Alexis Taylor (4:54)

We played football together, and we talked about bands quite a lot, and listened to music together. I would go around to Joe's house after school, and listen to the best of Leonard Cohen on a cassette. I remember he had that, and also Neil Young after the Gold Rush, we would listen to together with his brother Jazz. Then I also remember that we talked about contemporary bands.

He would read the NME newspaper, and I would as well, and we also loved a lot of the same things as each other, and went to see just loads of gigs, and we were talking about music all of the time. We were studying at that school, but we were, as friends, it was all about going to gigs together, and just learning about music, and being inspired by the bands.

Joe Goddard (5:44)

Alexis already had his enormous passion for Prince, and New Order, and Jamiroquai, and these type of things. Neil Young, some singer-songwriter stuff. And I was very passionate about grunge rock records and hip hop records. I was really, really obsessed with New York hip hop in the early 90s, when we began to know each other, and went to school together. So I was listening to a lot of De La Soul, and Beastie Boys, and Tribal Quest, and these kinds of things, which were also very important records for Alexis. And my family house in Fulham had like a cellar, a basement, where we were allowed to kind of hang out, where there was a TV and a games console, and we had an acoustic guitar.