London, UK · piano pop

Alexis Taylor

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Hot Chip's falsetto heart alone at the piano — tender machine-soul unplugged, reworking dance euphoria into something small, strange, and quietly devastating.

Alexis Taylor was born in London on 20 April 1980, to a Greek mother who works as a psychoanalyst and an English father who teaches English at a university. He co-founded Hot Chip with Joe Goddard while at Elliot Secondary School in Putney, and later studied English at Jesus College, Cambridge, where Hot Chip kept playing gigs under various early line-ups.

Taylor also plays in the improvising quartet About Group, formed in 2008 with John Coxon, pianist Pat Thomas and drummer Charles Hayward, formerly of This Heat. In 2007 he and Hot Chip released a two-song novelty record, Doubleshaw, under the joke names Georgios Panayiotou and Mother Markzbow, styled as Booji Boy High.

His solo albums pare the arrangements back to piano and voice or sparse electronics, beginning with Rubbed Out in 2008. Later releases include the EP Nayim from the Halfway Line, the album Await Barbarians, and Piano along with its companion Listen With(out) Piano, which reworks the same songs with other musicians and can be played alongside the original.

The album Beautiful Thing followed in 2018, produced by DFA Records co-founder Tim Goldsworthy. In 2021 Taylor released Silence, preceded by the singles 'House of the Truth,' 'Death of Silence' and 'Dying in Heaven,' and in 2023 he put out the single 'Wedding Song (Palace).'

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piano pop