Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor on his new album, ‘Paris In The Spring’

0:12Hello and welcome to The Monocle Weekly. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco and today I speak with Hot Chips' Alexis Taylor on his new solo album Paris in the Spring, his most revealing yet.

0:34Wild horses

0:40Couldn't drag me away

0:48Wild, wild horses Couldn't drag me away Alexis Taylor, welcome. Welcome back to Monaco Radio. Pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Thanks for having me back. It's a pleasure. And we're going to discuss your new solo album, Paris in the Spring. If you don't mind, shall we start with the title? I've been quite silly because I was thinking literally Paris in the Spring, but I did not know that actually that's an expression for a psychological test. So tell me, what was the inspiration for the title? so the album had a different working title which was cocaine wild horses and real love which is descriptive of some of the tracks on the record there's this one columbia and that has some reference to cocaine and then there's the song wild horses the the rolling stone song flying burrito brothers song and then there's this song i can feel your love working title of that was real Love.

1:50So I was trying to tie the album together with the key songs and themes and Cocaine, Wild Horses and Real Love felt to me like it suited the record because it sounded like the title you'd have for an outlaw country record in the 70s. And I liked the idea that kind of hidden beneath the surface of the production of the music was maybe something of a country inspired record however that title is a tricky title to put a record out with and get any kind of um i don't think people really play your music if you have this word in in the title and also today right yeah and also i'm it's an irony that i would call it that because i don't mind going on record and explaining i've never taken any drugs in my entire life so it would have been quite strange.

2:42I was even thinking, what will my daughter think of this record if that's the title? So that's a long way round explaining that I then thought, well, the record is made in Paris. Can I say something about the, you know, in the title, which it kind of explains the mood and the making of the record. And so I got as far as thinking about how much I love this film set in a different Paris called Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders. And I was going to have a title Paris Lexus. So Paris Alexis. And I was going to use the Paris, Texas film logo. And then I thought, no, this is too focused on a film that isn't really the inspiration for the album.

3:27And all of the interview questions will be about that. So then I talked to my good friend who's an artist called Oliver Payne about this predicament of like I have to change the title but that was always the title of the record I don't know I don't know what to do and he said well are you familiar with this phenomenon of Paris in the the spring and I didn't know what he was talking about and he showed me this image where it's a triangle with Paris in the the spring written on there and when you look at that image you don't read you don't notice that there are two words the in a row the reason it's referred to as a psychological test is because it's to do with the way our brains and eyes work together we skim through what we're reading and try and identify what's important in the phrase and we basically ignore this second the i believe the term is called saccades or um yeah saccades and it's to do with the eyes flicking back and forth scanning that's happening with the eyesight but the brain just gets rid of the second there so i liked the idea of including this sort of trick in the title and it's printed on the artwork and most people who look at it don't notice this second there the only real reason other than it being a nice phrase describing me making an album in the springtime in Paris, which is what happened.

4:54The only other reason for including this kind of strange psychological test is because a lot of the album is to do with our unconscious or the subconscious. And so a song like MP3s can make you cry. One of my favorites, I must add here. Thank you. And if I tell you the truth, will you still tell me the lies? That I so need to hear If you sing me yours, I will feel yours If you play the blues, make me punch, drunk and deal with it If you sing without you, you can sing That one is to do with a sort of stream of conscious way of forming a song and talking about what's on your mind, but talking about what comes out through the unconscious.

5:46And a lot of my music making in general in Hot Chip and Solo is to do with me trying to understand some feelings which are there and are very important to me, but they're sometimes hidden beneath the surface. And I can access them through music. And I can also sometimes access those thoughts and feelings in dreams. And the dreams sometimes lead to actual songs that form while I'm asleep. So I'm quite interested in what goes on in our unconscious. and wanted to talk about that in the music. Would you say this is your most personal album yet? I think it is. I think that a lot of the records I put out are very personal, so they're not really competing on a scale to be more personal.

6:31But then again, I think it is a combination of being perhaps the most personal and revealing, but also I think I've managed to put the music together around those personal observations and revelations in a way that makes it slightly more, in my mind, universal and able to reach, I hope, more people. I feel like I've worked longer on the presentation of what is personal, so that I might have made something personal before, but perhaps it's quite intimate and really for a particular mood you'd have to be in to listen to it. Whereas I think this record, it has some of the joy of the hot chip music and it has some of the joy of what's inside of me, which is an ultimately optimistic person.

7:26It's there in the production, as well as there being these quite sad sentiments as well. and so I think it's yeah it's it's like I've worked harder to get those things to naturally come together and hopefully make something which is more appealing and direct for people to to get into that comes across in the album although as you said you know there are songs that you know we can't describe them as sad or very emotional but there is an uplifting disco tone to it I mean a song that comes to mind is I can feel your love you know it's very kind of gospel disco like as But then I want to talk about For a Toy, which is a beautiful ballad.

8:04Why do I keep on fucking up? The only thing I have ever loved. Why do I keep on breaking apart? The only things that have What was your inspiration for that one as well? That one was not inspired by any particular music, but just a moment where I was alone in my studio in Alexandra Palace with this tape recorder I'd just recently got set up and the Yamaha piano at my fingertips. and the song seemed to come out almost fully formed and it was very much me working through some behavioral aspects some parts of my behavior which seem i i think on the whole i am you know not extremely troubled person but there are some things i do where i feel like they are um they're not helping me you know they maybe you fall into patterns of behavior which is self destructive or even destructive to things around you that are important to you and I wanted to I suppose process that in a quite raw way so it's questioning why does one behave in this way why does one do the thing that isn't good for you and do it again and the reason I haven't really pinpointed precisely what that refers to is because I think the song when other people hear it they can understand that they can relate to it for their own reasons.

9:56So one person heard it and said they felt it was, it could be to do with drinking or it could be to do with any dependency on a substance. And then at the same time, I think it could be to do with dependency on forming relationships with people where you build a bond with somebody, but that's destructive to another relationship you're in. So it's, it's, it doesn't really, to me, it doesn't really matter what the specifics of it are i mean i know how i was feeling and i could talk about that but i think it's more interesting if people know that that's a a song that they i hope that it resonates with whatever they are going through rather than it all being about my own experience so for a toy that just represents any kind of play thing or any kind of thing which is momentarily distracting And that could be, like I say, it could be a substance or it could be a person or it could be an activity or a thing.

10:55It could be your phone, you know, something that's distracting from the real the real tasks that are important. So that was the inspiration. And I think I have written songs a bit like that in the past and maybe actually buried them and not put them out. and this one I felt like this is a strong song and I want it to come out and I want to I want to kind of orchestrate it with the production and make it fully formed and and a single that people can you know focus on not just an album track hidden away a deep cut another thing that was on my mind with this album was with the song fainting by numbers and with the songs mp3s can make you cry those two they have some parts of them related to other people around me and their personal struggles i felt like for a toy fit in i didn't write it in order to fit in but i can see that it's thematically linked to those songs about struggle there's this famous song by barry manilow called mandy which everyone knows and this song originally is called brandy and it's by somebody called Scott English.

12:07And I think that Brandy is a song about an alcoholic. And so my song Fainting by Numbers is kind of written in a response to that song. I remember being told about this original version, Brandy, by my friend Eustace Kernke, who's a collaborator. And Eustace and I have a project together called Fainting by Numbers. and I felt like I wanted to write a sort of similar song to Brandy where it's a kind of a drinking song about somebody's relationship to that. So it's not, I don't say this just to deflect, it's not a personal, I'm not describing something where I've been crawling on the floor but it's a sort of fantasy of that and I felt like it was something I could really pour something personal into through these relationships I have with other people where their own struggles are very clear to me and I've talked to them about their struggles.

13:07But also it has some element, like any songwriting involves an element of exaggerating things or fantasizing. So it was to try and be a song in the tradition of that song, Brandy. And I also, I suppose I like the idea that most people would never hear Brandy, they would just hear Mandy. Sounds like only a love song, But actually the original song is somebody singing to this bottle of booze that they're needing to stop them from shaking. So I suppose I wanted to kind of uncover that hidden element to this pop song. So that's me explaining something about Fainting by Numbers, but how it links to For a Toy.

13:47Because For a Toy is, you know, I'm not making it totally explicit what the problematic thing is and letting people work that out for themselves. and also accepting that my songwriting maybe does lean into this kind of pop balladeering of a Barry Manilow and not being ashamed of that. Or Harry Nilsson. Yeah, or Harry Nilsson. Letting it be that kind of thing. I have a question. You know, when I was reading about your album, is it true that it was quite easy to start but then to finish actually was a bit more complicated? Really true, yeah. And why is that? Well, this album started with no pressure on it I just had a few songs one at a time MP3s Can Make You Cry and the one with the avalanches I Can Feel Your Love they were at the beginning of the process I can feel your love I can feel your love I can feel your love I can feel your love I have always wanted you And as I wrote and recorded those things, everything flowed, everything was easy.

15:03I was connecting with great people helping me. Pablo Godin, the son of Nicolas Godin from Air, was engineering and helping me. And Nicolas Godin from Air was helping play bass on MP3s Can Make You Cry. The Avalanches were very easy to work with. they sent me some music and I developed it into this song. It was very exciting, this beginning process. And I got a bit further than just those three songs. I probably got five songs into the process or six. And I was working with a producer called Pierre Russo, who I met through Nicola Godin. And he is fantastic and one of the best producers I've ever worked with.

15:43He has so much interesting creativity great ideas about how to support a song and bring it to life and to do very inventive things in the production so that all set it up really well but then unfortunately pierre became completely unavailable to me to carry on this working process and i had i did feel a bit like i had started to depend upon his production to help me so once he was no longer available which was just life sometimes gets in the way of people's availability and that's that's fine but it took me some time to figure out how i could finish a record i'd started in paris with pierre with pablo with nicola how could i continue it if pierre is now no longer available you didn't want the album to sound disjointed exactly yeah and i also felt i mean obviously who knows how anyone else will feel about this music when it's out there but I felt I'm making the best record I've made.

16:47So to then stop that process halfway through, which is what I felt was happening, I was like, oh, I'm missing the person who can help me continue to make the best record. It was difficult for me. I lost a lot of momentum. I don't think I've ever taken so long to make an album. It all just slowed down. And I don't think Pierre Russo was even aware that that impact would happen. Because he was only occasionally, in terms of hours, he was only occasionally working with me anyway. But it was a very important link for me. So I then just had to find a solution to that. And I think sometimes that's more psychologically difficult than it is practically achievable.

17:32Because you just feel like you're set on a certain path. And I couldn't think of anyone who could stand in for Pierre. I think of this record by Peter Gabriel, So, where Daniel Lanoir was producing it. And I believe they had quite a long process making this record and sometimes quite a difficult process with Daniel Lanoir having to really be strict and shut Peter Gabriel in a room and say you have to write these words. It wasn't like that. There was none of that drama. But nonetheless, I felt like I'd found this link in the producer that was so important to the whole process that it seemed impossible to carry on without him.

18:10So to cut a long story short, and I'm not good at cutting things short, I eventually found Ollie Baston, based in London, to help me finish the rest of the record. And we wrote new songs together. so we wrote Black Lodge in the Sky and we wrote Out of Phase and we wrote On a Whim those all came together by working with this new producer as well as him helping me finish everything I'd started with the Paris sessions On a Whim is very funky I like it you know there's some kind of funkadelic vibes yeah I mean I love funk music and I'm really pleased with how that one turned out the bass line which is at the core of it is something Ollie played and that led me to write the chords and to kind of make the song with him and to then invite Green Gartside from Skritti Pility to sing and to play guitar and so I think it owes something to the sound of those Skritti Pility funky records but also it's very much it started off without him being a part of it I just brought him in as the session went on so a lot of new life was breathed into the process despite me at some point feeling a bit despondent and how am I going to finish it it then actually had some of the best songs came along because of this second phase of working with Ollie he was so brilliant at overseeing the completion of the record and knowing what was needed and getting the best out of me and me still being the chief songwriter and maker of this music but him helping me in co-writing and so that was a that cheered you up in a way yeah definitely because it was somebody else with a fresh perspective on it who was able to say yes this is really good but we can finish it and we can write more and so the thing that I'm really pleased with not just the music but I'm pleased with the fact that I took the time to get it right because I think that sometimes it's in my nature to I love recording quickly and writing quickly so it was kind of new to me to take a bit longer and I really felt like maybe if you wait longer the right songs come into your head and you have the right collection of songs to be the strongest record rather than thinking you need to finish just for some arbitrary deadline you know so that was important to me and hopefully I got that right and the other thing I would quite like to say is just how much the collaborators informed the record you know it may have come from me but we have lola kirk we have elizabeth white singing from the group pale blue we have green go outside nicolah godin the avalanches emma smith who's played it she now plays in pulp and beth gibbons but she's a friend of mine from school and has been on every record of mine and every hot chip record and the producers Pierre and Ollie co-producers I wanted to to really sort of make it a collective sound as much as it came out from beginnings of mine you know I needed those relationships and collaborations with those other people sometimes they're just adding something at the final stage but other times they're integral to the whole track so I definitely want to kind of thank all of those people.

21:32And I think the listeners probably can hear that it's a bit more outreaching as a record by having these other people involved. It's less insular and a bit more kind of, yeah, outwardly looking. Absolutely. And I was going to ask, coming back to some of your French collaborators, the title pair is, I mean, were you thinking about French music as well when you're making the album? Is this something that you, are you influenced perhaps by the French touch or, so tell us more about your connection with France in that sense. I feel like I have been a bit of a late comer to some of the classic and brilliant French producers and makers of music.

22:10So growing up, that wasn't the most important music to me. I think American music and soul music was really most important. but then we traveled as a band with Hot Chip to Paris to finish an album, Bath Full of Ecstasy, with Philippe Zadar and we loved working with him and his production and his mixing and his enthusiasm which he could feel through his, he was a very demonstrative person physically and very up person And I felt like there was a spirit in Philippe that was really infectious and really brilliant. And we loved being in his studio, Motorbase. It was tragic that Philippe died a year after that record was finished.

23:03And so we never got to work with him again. And, you know, a real loss to music that he died. It was so, so sad. And I think a part of me felt, even though that was a Hot Chip record, I felt some growing connection to the city of Paris after having worked there and also I was beginning to become friends with Nicolas Godin having worked on his last album, his last solo record. So it's quite circumstantial, you know, it's that I did this record with Philippe Zidane with Hot Chip and loved being in Paris and I felt like we expected that we would actually complete another record with Philippe but he died so we weren't able to do that.

23:46So maybe I wanted to continue something musically in that city, but it just ended up being a different project and in a different studio. But in the process of doing it, it was definitely very inspirational to me to be in that city and to walk around and enjoy. I mean, I wasn't there for long because I was working in the studio a lot, but any time that I left the studio, I loved being in Paris. I loved conversations with people there. And also musically, in a very direct way, I knew those air records because I had sold them in a record shop when I was younger. My first job was working in a record shop in London.

24:25I remember the first record being out and hearing it every day. But I was, like I say, a latecomer because I only really started to get to see that band play live when they reformed quite recently and when I got to know Nicola himself. and so then I was on something of a personal journey of exploring some sounds which I think are key to French music. So the vocoder, which obviously isn't a French instrument, but it's used so much in the music of air and things like the talk box and the vocoder and autotune are a big part of the Daft Punk records. Like in your song, Your Only Life as well, right?

25:04There's a little bit of a robo voice. Yeah, there's some of that on different parts of the record. Forgiving, life is tough And unforgiving, leaves in space For living your only life So Nicola helped me. He did some vocoder playing on MP3's Can Make You Cry, and I did some myself, and I would sit with him and ask him for technical advice about how to get the right sounds out of it. And, you know, he's a master of that instrument. And then also in the mix is Etienne de Cressy, who I sang on his last record, and he helped me to make a particular version of this song, I Can Feel Your Love. He was integral to the moment where I had the lyrics for the chorus I asked him would you help me record that so I came to his studio he recorded my singing and some keyboard parts that I played but they were done in his studio and he made a really good mix of that song which is quite similar to the final mix so he was a integral part to the quite long journey of finishing that song from the beginnings with the avalanches sending me an instrumental from Australia to me working on it on my own to me having to remove a massive part of the song which was a sample which we couldn't clear to then writing a new chorus working with Etienne and then finally finishing it in London with Ollie Baston so it's a strange thing where some of these songs they've not changed dramatically from the beginning to the end but they've been on something of a journey to get to the thing which I feel is the kind of perfection of those things I worked harder to really finish things and this same happened with Your Only Life and the same thing happened with For A Toy.

27:03Like I would demo these songs in different places, like literally different places all around the world. Mexico City, Los Angeles, London, Paris, working on different versions until I felt like I'd supported the song properly and made it exactly what it needed to be in the production. That was, I suppose, what added time to the making of this record. And of course, you're focusing on the album. I know there will be some performances from April I believe. Yes. But Hot Chip's still going strong. Last year you guys celebrated 25 years. Yes, that's right. Right now as I prepare to put this new solo record out, we're making another Hot Chip album.

27:44Amazing. So I can't say when it will be released, but it's going well, the making of that. So it's been very enjoyable to finish the solo record and start putting the music out and start get some feedback on that music from audiences and at the same time kind of know we're making a new hot chip album and and we'll be able to announce that whenever it's ready and to be working with a group of people that i've known for so long is really special because we have a you know it doesn't get easier to make albums just because you've done it before because you're always trying to make sure you at least match what you've done before or better what you've done before and that can be challenging but being with that group of friends we i think really help each other and inspire each other and it's a kind of warm atmosphere in the studio and that i suppose is quite different from making a solo record where it's all on you to kind of come up with everything and i'm sure doing a live from your solo is a very different thing than touring with hardship right yeah it's very different i mean they're a lot more lonely in a way i think for the solo tour I'll be with one of my Hot Chip bandmates Rob Smelton who is multi-instrumentalist playing within the live band of Hot Chip and he's been a part of Hot Chip actually since the beginning so he will be on tour with me but we're still figuring out how to bring this album to life live but it won't be lonely even if I were to play some shows totally solo I actually like that experience I think that is also a reason why some of the songs are quite revealing because I think I get something strong out of being on a stage or being on a record where you put your heart on the line or you or you kind of say a lot that is personal in front of people that when I say in front of people I mean in the room playing something or releasing music it's a powerful part of music making for me to be quite open and I think that the audience connects with that it's obviously not for everyone but I think a lot of people get something direct emotionally from the music that they find they can connect with or it's or it's hopefully quite a powerful exchange with an audience I mean most solo things I've done live have been like me and a piano so not relying on anybody else at all but i also i have periods of time where there's a band with me for solo and that's really enjoyable for me too and it will be a bit more like that this time with rob

30:46Thank you, Alexis. Paris in the Spring is out now. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco, and this show was edited by Jack Dewars. Thank you for listening.