Hot Chip are one of the biggest bands of the past few years. Not Girls Aloud- performing-on-X-Factor-big, but after three albums (one of which was nominated for a Mercury Music Award) they’ve gone about gaining popularity in a stealth-like manner. I can’t think of anyone who has ever said a bad word about them. Everyone likes them. The evidence of this is that most of my phone book appears to be at the gig.

And on a night when fireworks are whizzing over the heads of fans heading to their biggest Brighton gig so far, Hot Chip deliver a gig with more jumping than a dogs’ home surrounded by Catherine wheels. The gorgeous Brighton Dome is the biggest Brighton venue they’ve played so far and support comes from Max Tundra, also signed to the prestigious Moshi Moshi label. He throws in his cover of “Playboy” from Hot Chip’s first album to warm the crowd up for the main event.

Hot Chip themselves open up gently with “One Pure Thought” from the “Made in the Dark” album followed by the hilariously titled “Bendable Poseable” – cue silly dancing, even in the upper tier. The Hot Chip boys don’t really do crowd interaction but the guitarists are always partial to a bit of a rocking out at the front of the stage every now and then. “Shake a Fist” sees to that. Highlights from the rest of the set include the gorgeous, if haunting, “And I was a Boy from School” single, from Mercury nominated “The Warning” album and my favourite from the new album, “Hold On” – a foot-stomping, fist-shaking (how ironic) Hot Chip classic.

“Over and Over” is followed by the band’s most popular recent release, “Ready for the Floor”. They judge their best tracks well and leave the Brighton audience eager for more before coming back with a very special encore to this special gig. The title track from “Made in the Dark” ends the brief interlude, followed by a song from their “DJ-Kicks” mix album, the beautiful and aptly named piano ditty “My Piano”. “No Fit State” whips up the crowd before the brilliant finale: “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O’Connor performed by Hot Chip and merged into their track “In the Privacy of Our Love”. Amazing. If you were lucky enough to catch the band in The Mash Tun afterwards and tell them that, I don’t want to know. I’m still green with envy.

Words by Andrea Fox

Photography by Ian Greenland