Ask a crate-crawling muso "What kind of music do you listen to?" and you'll probably send him to ground twitching. Ask him for a mixtape and he'll stay up all night creating a set of ten CD-Rs that bounce genres like nobody's business, then badger you one day later with "Did you listen to it?," "How far did you get?," and "What did you like?" Luckily, quirky pop nerds Hot Chip don't know where you live, which makes this doomed mishmash of everything The Wire magazine might write about -- plus a New Order track -- worth considering, especially if you're a Hot Chip fan and would like to look inside their heads. On their volume of K7's long-running DJ Kicks series, classic hip-hop tracks that make snobs sentimental (Positive K) rub next to difficult people you should know (This Heat), while U.K. garage (Wookie), tropicalia (Tom Zé), and icy new wave (Grauzone) all make cameos. Add Joe Jackson and Ray Charles at the end and you really have something for everyone, which would probably sound amazing in the hands of cut-up, mash-up masters like Steinski, Coldcut, and DJ Z-Trip. Hot Chip don't aspire to recontextualization or freaking anyone out with their DJ prowess and while the CD is mixed, it only flows in parts and only for so long before an impossible genre jump makes feeling the bump unavoidable. All that said, if you're only aware of half of these artists you've got hours of Internet searching and rewards ahead of you, and Hot Chip's choices in modern minimal house and other fringe dance music flavors are fantastic. Including the ridiculously fun "Jiggle It" from Def Jam teen Young Leek deserves a high five and the group's own previously unreleased contribution, "My Piano," is that great combination of beautiful and strange that makes this crew special. In the end they don't come off as unapproachable showoffs and avoid sounding too smart for their own good as much as they possibly could. File this next to John Peel's Fabriclive.07 and all those equally cumbersome and fascinating mixtapes you've been gifted.
© David Jeffries /TiVo