On a ranked list of unlikely collaborations, Hot Chip and Robert Wyatt would probably place just above the Decemberists and Hinder, just below Philip Glass and DJ Drama. The mystery isn't why Hot Chip would jump at the chance to work with Wyatt, an avant-music elder statesman since founding the seminal prog-rock band Soft Machine 40-odd years ago, but why Wyatt, who's collaborated with established titans like Brian Eno and David Gilmour, would be interested in a young and (relatively) untested electro-soul band. They even look odd together-- Wyatt with his wild white mane and beard, Hot Chip with their cable-knit sweaters and chunky glasses. It's as if mighty Zeus split open Cronus' stomach and released a gaggle of nerdy-chic reference librarians.
But it makes perfect sense once you hear the music. On a pragmatic note, this EP came about simply: Hot Chip remixed Wyatt's patricianly funky song "This Summer Night" (a collaboration with Bertrand Burgalat) as a minimal electro seether. They contacted Wyatt, who liked the remix, and asked him if he'd like to cover any of their songs. Wyatt chose four, and entered the studio with Hot Chip to record new versions of three. The fourth, "One Pure Thought", was remixed by Geese, which comprises two members of Elysian Quartet, who also lend imperious strings to the "We're Looking for a Lot of Love" cover. On the aesthetic end, Wyatt's voice (he duets with Alexis Taylor on "Whistle for Will" and "We're Looking for a Lot of Love", and provides off-kilter vocal architecture elsewhere) has a soft-bellied vulnerability to rival Taylor's, and his accessible out-music touches breathe new life into Hot Chip's arrangements.
Take "Made in the Dark", the first song to be released from the collaboration. It was already one of the latest Hot Chip LP's strongest tracks, and Wyatt improves it by retaining Taylor's indelible vocal melody while jettisoning the soft-rock arrangement in favor of something much livelier, something that feels organic without resorting to folksiness. It's spacious and strange, its aching chord progression dressed in melancholic horns and toothsome harmonies by Wyatt. A mouth harp responds to the lead vocals' calls, achieving the tricky feat of being amusing and sonically compelling at once. It also seems to somewhat cheekily allude to the current craze for digitally mediated vocals, positing the mouth harp as a proto-vocoder. Quirky yet approachable touches like this define the EP.
Wyatt is just as good at revivifying Made in the Dark's slighter songs, like the sultry "Whistle for Will". The original had the barest intimation of a beat and an unclear melodic progression, like rain disturbing a puddle. Wyatt draws its form into sharp relief, piling on honeyed strings and rooting them to a cavernous backbeat. "We're Looking for a Lot of Love" recapitulates the formal inventiveness of "Made in the Dark", opening with a flurry of reversed sounds and clipped breaths, then resolving into a harmonious braid of independent parts-- strings bowed and pizzicato, genial whistles, cut-up vocal palimpsests. Its cacophonous conclusion is the only instance of Wyatt sacrificing clarity for obscurity on the EP, and it works well as such an isolated counterpoint. And Geese do a ground-up overhaul on "One Pure Thought", dropping a part of its vocal line into what sounds like a tangle of layered kalimba and halting strings. At a time when many albums contain an EP's worth of ideas, an EP containing an album's worth is a nice change of pace.
Collaborations between obviously comparable artists tend to be somewhat handcuffed: Listeners understandably expect a certain kind of result. The unlikelihood of the Hot Chip/Robert Wyatt connection gives this EP a sense of unfettered freedom, and of generosity-- it's a fan service for adherents of each contributor, and best of all, you can download a couple of the tracks for free from Hot Chip's website. Hot Chip gains cultural capital by working with a legend, Robert Wyatt gets a dose of youthful energy, and we're left with the feeling that popular music could be more exciting all around if more artists were willing to collaborate outside of their commercial niche, producing wonderfully inessential labors of love. Suddenly, a "Music in 12 Parts" mixtape (with cameos by Lil Wayne, Ludacris, and Michael Nyman) sounds almost plausible.
