Hot Chip share gnarly title track to their upcoming 'Freakout/Release'

“Music used to be escape, now I can’t escape it,” Alexis Taylor sings on Hot Chip‘s “Freakout/Release,” the title track to the group’s upcoming eighth album. The record is new territory for Hot Chip — they made it from the start as a whole band for the first time — and “Freakout/Release” features some of the gnarliest sounds they’ve ever recorded. This one was co-produced by Soulwax, and distorted vocoders, crashing drums and dirty synths abound, yet the through-line to tracks like “Over and Over” is clearly evident. Hot Chip sound engaged and exciting here in a way they haven’t in while.

“’Freakout/Release’ is about pent-up energy and the need for release, and escape,” says Taylor. “It’s also about making sense of music, and at times being plagued by the thing you focus on – music never leaves my head for a second, which is usually a good feeling, but it can feel claustrophobic at times too. It’s also about finding your place in relation to music and to performing. The riff should feel brutal and dumb and elemental and Joe was thinking about ‘Seven Nation Army’ and the simplicity of that swinging from quiet to loud and back and forth.”

Listen to “Freakout/Release” below.

Freakout/Release is out August 19 via Domino.