Hot Chip – Random Violence
Joe Goddard carries the first stretch of “Random Violence” alone, and Alexis Taylor only comes in later, by which point the song has moved from mourning to gratitude. It’s Hot Chip’s tribute to Keith McIvor, aka JD Twitch of Optimo, the Glasgow DJ who died in September 2025, and the lyric opens with blunt, practical questions about what happens to a body once it’s gone: cremation or burial, then the silence after. From there it turns to the friends left telling stories about a man whose whole life was sending records out to strangers, and Taylor’s entrance lands like the thank-you note.
Jack Cole’s video brings in Boss Morris, the all-female progressive morris side, as woodland spirits and cursed animals, a nod to Optimo’s Halloween parties at Sub Club, the room where the band met McIvor twenty years ago. Lead single from A Long Way From Kansas, out January 8, 2027 on Domino. A eulogy written for the dancefloor where the friendship started. Exactly right.
DJ set
- October 21, 2026: Glasgow, Sub Club (with friends, free entry)
Europe
- February 26, 2027: Berlin, Astra
- February 28, 2027: Brussels, La Madeleine
- March 1, 2027: Amsterdam, Paradiso
- March 2, 2027: Paris, Le Bataclan
UK & Ireland
- March 4, 2027: Dublin, 3Olympia
- March 6, 2027: Leeds, Leeds Beckett Students’ Union
- March 8, 2027: Glasgow, SWG3 Galvanizers
- March 9, 2027: Manchester, Albert Hall
- March 10, 2027: Bristol, O2 Academy
- March 12, 2027: London, Exhibition White City
