The exodus from EMI could end up working well for Hot Chip. As Guy Hands wheels his Overhead Projector of Hard Realities through the label's morale-sapped HQ, all Hot Chip need to do is keep their heads down. If any more artists throw down their instruments, the keyboard-prodding Putney quintet may be charged with the responsibility of leading EMI's commercial fightback. It's a big job - but then, what could possibly go wrong that didn't already go wrong when Kylie delivered her arch Hoxton disco disaster, also for EMI, four months ago?

Having already impressed Hoxton with their 2005 debut Coming on Strong, Hot Chip edged closer to crossover in 2006 with Over and Over, a self-describing earworm that arrived in the collective psyche with overnight bags already packed.

Indeed, these days, you rather suspect that in Hot Chip's minds they're competing with American pop futurists such as Rich Harrison and Timbaland on songs such as Touch Too Much and the new single Ready for the Floor. If a passing Rihanna stopped by to sing lines such as “I'm hoping with chance/ You might take this dance” they might even have a point. But with the diminutive, bespectacled Alexis Taylor taking on most of the vocal duties, Hot Chip become a very different thing - an addition to the rich tradition of producer-performers who treat pop as a thing that you construct with tools rather than write down with pen and paper. Godley & Creme and Trevor Horn-era Yes spring to mind on Hold On and Shake a Fist.

It's surely also a cast-iron certainty that in Hot Chip's rock encyclopedia the Beatles and Wings were really just a warm-up for the release of the McCartney II album. The airless proto-electronica of Macca's weirdest solo album is all over here. Not just on such as Wrestlers and Bendable Poseable, but the strip-lit subterranean melancholy of Whistle for Will and We're Looking for a Lot of Love.

Novel as the execution may be, there's little attempt on songs such as the New Order-ish Touch Too Much and the exquisite title track to disguise that much of Made in the Dark seems to spring from sticky relationship issues. If Hot Chip's dilemma is that these songs are delivered by white middle-class Englishmen who don't trust themselves to emote convincingly, their answer to that dilemma seals their strange genius - delegate the emoting to machines; machines that go about their business in much the same way as toys that come to life the moment their owners go to bed.

Such faith in circuit boards is repaid. Having long mastered clever, Hot Chip's new album should catapult them to big.

(EMI)

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