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New Ltd Single ‘Heart Of Hearts’: 19th Feb 2007
New Album ‘Myth Takes’: 5th March 2007
The last time !!! released any music was two years ago, when we heard them doing strange things to Stephen Merritt’s morose indie staple ‘Take Ecstasy With Me’, in the process turning it into a eight-minute long acid house classic that divebombed out of club speakers worldwide. It was easily one of the best singles of 2005, but now this dancefloor-destroying Pan-American eight-piece have taken their trademark dance-funk sound off into previously unimaginable new territories.
The ten tracks on their third album, ‘Myth Takes’, are more dense, layered and groovy than ever before – it’s !!! to the power of !!!, a cut’n’paste pop art sound-splash built from lupine post-punk bass patterns, spaghetti western guitars, African polyrhythms, house bleeps and vintage Philly soul. It’s also no exaggeration to say that there is no music like this being made anywhere else on the planet at the moment. With ‘Myth Takes’, !!! have stretched themselves so far that they’ve become truly peerless.
Because, if they’re anything, !!! (drummer John Pugh, singer Nic Offer, percussionist and horn player Allan Wilson, guitarist Mario Andreoni, keyboardist Tyler Pope, bassist Justin Van Der Volgen and percussionists Dan Gorman and Jerry Fuchs) are a band that like to test their own limits. It’s all born from an endless almost spiritual quest to find the ultimate groove, the mystical piece of music that will make all other songs redundant. And like most monks, !!!’s spiritual quest is accompanied by intense and rigourous physical training.
Rehearsing ‘Myth Takes’ in a rented house on the wrong side of Nashville, the band started each day with a strict exercise regime. “We all lived in this huge empty building – there was literally nothing there so that when we moved in we had to go out to the thrift shop and buy coffee cups” remembers Nic Offer. “But every morning we’d do a kung-fu workout together and then after that we’d jam together all afternoon and night. I think that the neighbours thought we were a cult or something. One time the postman walked into the yard when we were all out in our little short shorts doing chants and contorted into these weird sweaty positions. It worked, though. Don’t mess with the magic.”
Nowhere is the magic more obvious than when they play live. Formed in 1995 specifically to play an all-night party in Sacramento, California, they’re still easily one of the most exciting live acts in the world. But with ‘Myth Takes’ the band let their audiences choose the direction of the songs. “The songs are basically written four times” explains Nic. “We write them in the practice space and then we test them on the road. Then we take them back into the studio and rewrite them before we tour them again. So they evolve. But playing them on the road has a way of making everything gel: people come to see us and party and dance, so if that doesn’t happen we’re not doing our job properly.” A 2006 UK arena tour supporting Red Hot Chilli Peppers helped the band hone their performance even more. “Doing that tour we learnt that to play shows that big you have to make the hooks hit harder and make everything seem bigger, I could feel us getting better every night.”
The band are still spread all over the US, so the Nashville house was a welcome opportunity for them to get back together and jam for three weeks non-stop: in this case, almost literally. “Usually when we jam we try and let things go for at least 45 minutes” laughs Nic “but sometimes we’ll get so into it that we’ll play for two hours and not notice.”
“But besides that I think when we covered that Magnetic Fields song it brought us down to how simple it actually is to write a song. All the best music is made when you’re discovering how to do something new - we’re used to writing nine minute songs, but playing something that was so simple made us rethink the whole concept of the song.”
Justin Van Der Volgen produced the record, threading the best bits of the Nashville house jams together to create a dense sonic patchwork that has as much in common with ‘70s Jamaican dub as 21st century dance-punk and somehow amdist all this ‘Myth Takes’ inadvertently features some of the sparkliest of pop.
With ‘Myth Takes’, !!! are one giant step closer to perfecting what they are capable of but as nic puts it “Really, all we want to do is play. If we could jam together forever without stopping, we probably would. We’re just dedicated to chasing that elusive groove.”
Don’t miss them do it!!!
NB: The name of the band is pronounced by repeating any three identical monosyllabic sounds. !!! is the most common of these, but they can also be called Pow Pow Pow, Bam Bam Bam, Uh Uh Uh, Etc Etc Etc. or whatever else you can think of that sounds good.
‘Heart Of Hearts’ will be released as single on 19th February on Warp Records
The album ‘Myth Takes’ will be released on 5th March on Warp Records.
www.myspace.com/chkchkchk | www.chkchkchk.com
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