Chin Chin

Chin Chin took shape in 2001 as a versatile ensemble rooted in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg district, blending funk, electronic dance music, and indie rock into a sound that rapidly won over critics through both its recordings and its energetic performances. At the center of the group stands a core trio of multi-instrumentalists—Wilder Zoby on keyboards and vocals, Torbitt Schwartz on drums and vocals, and Jeremy Wilms on guitar—each of whom brings formal conservatory training and prior professional experience to the project. In the studio and onstage they regularly expand this lineup with a rotating cast of Williamsburg associates that includes vocalists Marcus Farrar and Jesse Boykins III, guitarists James Kelly and Tada Hirano, trumpeter and flügelhorn player Jeff Pierce, trombonist Felix Chen, vibraphonist and percussionist Yusuke Yamamoto, and percussionist Yoshi Takemasa.

Comparisons to Steely Dan arise naturally from the jazz-funk leanings of the music and from the band’s working method, in which the three principals oversee a shifting roster of supporting players from track to track. Yet the stylistic parallels stop short of jazz or rock, because the trio’s primary inspirations lie in the synth-driven and disco-inflected branches of funk together with electronic dance music. After establishing themselves through repeated live appearances in Williamsburg, Chin Chin issued their first recordings in 2007 on the French label Dialect Recordings: the 12-inch singles Toot d’Amore, featuring remixes by Prins Thomas, and Appetite, featuring remixes by Chicken Lips, plus a self-titled full-length album. In 2008 the American imprint Definitive Jux released that full-length album domestically to uniform critical praise, and two years later the band followed with The Flashing, the Fancing.