Hot Chip

A Bath Full of Ecstasy

These nine new songs see the band’s gift for melody and grasp of pop’s dynamics tweaked into transcendent shapes by house master Philippe Zdar and xx producer Rodaidh McDonald.

For all its glimmering synths and the robotic pathos of Taylor’s idiosyncratic vocals, this is a record with both heart and soul.

Their ingenuity and introspection often serves as an antidote to brash, factory-made pop, making them crucial figures within the wider pop landscape. On A Bath Full of Ecstasy, Hot Chip remain as vital as ever.

Their lushest sounding project yet.

Hot Chip have always made songs that slip between the erotic and and neurotic, but this time out there’s another level, as the tracks slip sideways to comment on our upside down world.

Their strongest offering in years, where dance is an act of defiance.

They have been put on this planet to create beautiful, awe-inspiring packages of synth pop and alternative dance, a charge that A Bath Full of Ecstasy more than delivers on.

Their more collaborative process has brought an album that, while rarely deviating from that Hot Chip sound, feels lighter and freer.

A Bath Full of Ecstasy provides hope within strife, encourages repeated listens as much for their danceability as the quality of the writing.

The few weaknesses of A Bathfull of Ecstasy – particularly the decision by the band to frontload all the strongest tracks – prove to be minor hitches in what is otherwise a characteristically superb song collection.