!!! - the "Myth Takes" era (first BB 200 album!)

[jaxxalude]

XLR8R

!!! Preps Album and Tour

The music world had been offering up collective prayers that dance-punk band !!! wouldn't go the way of its sister band Outhud after the latter split in 2006. Rest assured, a new album, Myth Takes, has been announced, with a release slated for spring. The first single, "Heart of Hearts" is available for download from the band's official site, to whet your appetite for the coming full-length. Prepare to dance!

Myth Takes is out March 4, 2007 on Warp.

Tracklisting
1. Myth Takes
2. All My Heroes Are Weirdos
3. Must Be the Moon
4. A New Name
5. Heart of Hearts
6. Sweet Life
7. Yadnus
8. Bend Over Beethoven
9. Break in Case of Anything
10. Infinifold



The band will hit the road in support of the album starting February. Why they've chosen to eschew any North American dates is a mystery, so European fans, catch them at one of these dates and report back to us.

Tour Dates
02/20 Newcastle
02/21 London
03/02 Tokyo
03/03 Osaka
03/05 Nagoya
03/08 Sydney
03/09 Brisbane
03/10 New South Wales
03/11 Victoria
03/12 Melbourne
03/16 Galway
03/17 Dublin
03/19 Glasgow
03/20 Manchester
03/21 Leeds
03/22 London
03/23 Nottingham
03/24 Bristol
03/26 Lille
02/28 Torino
03/29 Roma
03/30 Bologna
03/31 Milano
04/02 Montpelier
04/04 Oporto
04/05 Lisoa
04/06 Madrid
04/07 Barcelona
04/08 Marmande
04/10 Nantes
04/11 Paris
04/12 Brussels
04/13 Rotterdam
04/14 Hamburg
04/16 Copenhagen
04/17 Aarhus
04/19 Stockholm
04/20 Oslo
04/21 Malmo
04/23 Berlin
04/25 Wilen
04/26 Graz
04/28 Indio, CA

=============================//========================

I've missed them the first time here. Let's see if I can finally catch them on April 5th. ???

[oscillations.]

"The music world had been offering up collective prayers that dance-punk band !!! wouldn't go the way of its sister band Outhud after the latter split in 2006."

Oh yeah, we were all dying without them around.

[jaxxalude]

Lead singer Nic Offer gives Pitchfork the whole rundown on the current state of their world.

[jaxxalude]

Video for "Heart Of Hearts" is right here. Are they following the Bon Jovi strategy of looking like seasoned arena performers when they're still not?

[jaxxalude]

INTHEMIX

!!! - Myth Takes
Created On February 12th, 2007 by PieroRuzzene

In 2004 !!! (Chk Chk Chk) dwarfed almost every post-punk dance disco group around. After a forgetful debut, the nine man juggernaut unleashed the relentless and delirious ‘Louden Up Now’, a heady stew of sound that drew on everything from early Chicago acid house, to no wave, Krautrock and post punk politics, but !!! segued it together with an audacity, reckless abandon and unpredictability that was all their own. At the centerpiece was ‘Me and Giuliani Down By The School Yard’, a 9 minute opus combusting with ideas that nodded to almost every underground genre that has twisted dance floors in sweaty knots, all wrapped in a groove that unraveled like an endless ball of bass string.

Following up even just that single would be a feat in itself, and if !!! had just replicated ‘Louden Up Now’ they would have been thrown on the smoldering one trick pony pile. But their eagerly awaited follow up, ‘Myth Takes’, is a totally different beast; more song based, with density and tight structure, steely eyed focus and truly jaw dropping tunes. Touring with RHCP has no doubt taken the scope away from rocking clubs to blitzing festivals, and you feel that on every note on ‘Myth Takes’. There is still that relentless excavation for groove that !!! pursue, but it’s been clipped. They don’t need to play for 9 minutes now; they get you where they want you almost straight away before sucking you down their delirious whirlpool of sexfunk.

Opener and title track ‘Myth Takes’ proves progression instantly but offers ominous beginnings, Spaghetti western guitars scratch over pulped up Tarantino-esques grooves, and the mumbled vocals of “sha sha sha boogie” could soundtrack a rusty Reservoir Dogs Pontiac ride to a diamond heist. The whiskey soaked saloon stomp ‘Must Be the Moon’ is great rockabilly punk funk, recalling both The Clash and Butthole Surfers, while ‘A New Name’ is pop music soaked in shadows, gorgeous and sinister. !!!’s recent touring mates influence is so strong it borders on imitation on the otherwise engrossing ‘Sweet Life’, and the deep and stoned kaleidoscopes of sound that shapes ‘Break In Case Of Anything’ is truly mesmerising.

These are, of course, the bustling propulsive epics for which !!! are famous. Lead single ‘Heart of Hearts’ is just simply sublime, heading down the dark disco alley with a female siren penetrating an aural avalanche with “it’s got to be real love baby, you are such a precious thing”. It grinds to a halt halfway through, before crashing through to a gloriously chaotic finale. Same for the 8 minute plus and cheekily titled ‘Bend over Beethoven’, which is so locked up and tangled in its own dense, tense groove you think it could just go on forever.

What’s great about ‘Myth Takes’ is !!!’s burning desire to take their sound deeper into a cavern of creativity and push their own boundaries. Those looking for the stop-start jerk and devastating changes that defined ‘Louden Up Now’ will be perplexed, as this album is wider in scope and impressive in its reach. At the forefront of this formless faceless juggernaut is vocalist Nic Offer, who is truly impressive, as he writhes and gyrates from whoa to go, diving deep into his range and giving it his all. Make sure you see these guys when hit our shores in March, their live shows are legendary and ‘Myth Takes’ will no doubt be one of the albums of 2007.

[jaxxalude]

!!! get their groove on at InTheMix.

[joker]

Pitchfork Review

!!!
Myth Takes
[Warp; 2007]
Rating: 8.0

With his midriff-baring t-shirts and loose-limbed dance moves, !!!'s Nic Offer is a total goofball in the unselfconscious way that only really cool guys can get away with being. If you've ever attended a performance by !!! or Offer's former band, Out Hud, then you're familiar with his repertoire: the Christ-like wingspan, overhead clapping, shimmying hips, gangly duck-walking, dervish spins, scissor kicks, and humpy pelvic thrusts. It's like the mutant spawn of step aerobics, Flashdance, and Electric Boogaloo in an arena-ready package: ridiculous, extravagant, and completely awesome. Offer's stage presence isn't just deeply entertaining; it's an ice-breaker that gives us permission, by example, to forget ourselves and celebrate with abandon. You can tell he's having a hell of a time, and his enthusiasm is infectious.

This wanton enthusiasm permeates Myth Takes, !!!'s most consistent album to date. They've always been polyrhythmic pop experimenters in the vein of Talking Heads or Arthur Russell, leavening guitar-and-horn driven disco-punk with adventurous dashes of trance, funk, soul, krautrock, and points beyond. Given this aesthetic dilettantism-- plus !!!'s supple rhythm section and knack for explosive hooks-- the band, on paper, seems to have developed a template that should turn out smart bangers every time. But in practice, !!!'s songwriting has sometimes struggled to keep up with their prodigious ideas. For every pitch-perfect dancefloor meltdown like "Me and Giuliani Down By the School Yard (A True Story)" or their take on the Magnetic Fields' "Take Ecstasy with Me", the band's previous albums often squandered their momentum with boggy, static grooves and bizarre tangents. I'm not one to chastise bands for ambition, even when it leads them astray, but there's something to be said for zeroing in on what you do best. What !!! does best are the incendiary disco-punk raveups that, happily, take up most of the space on Myth Takes.

Any tentative or half-baked delivery is all but absent from Myth Takes, which rampages through the annals of kinetic music without letting genre tropes override or diffuse the songs' impact. The cerebral always takes a backseat to the visceral, and the album, while varied, is united by relentless propulsion. The title track's elastic bass and spaghetti-western guitar licks are a tense backdrop for Offer's smarmy scatting-- not to mention an effective foil to the ominous funk-laden following track, "All My Heroes Are Weirdoes". Mobile bass and telegraphic synths dominate the sex-jam "Must Be the Moon", a sort of pimp-strutting nursery rhyme for the 21+ set ("One drink, two drinks, three drinks, four!"). "A New Name" holds two contrasting modes in balance: earthy funk verses and a spacey soul-noir chorus that sloughs off tiny ice-chip tones, testifying to the importance of bassist and sound engineer Justin Vandervolgen's subtle tweaks. No longer experimenting for experimentation's sake, every beat-breaking decision on Myth Takes serves to reinforce the monumental rhythms.

When the album is at its less-than-best, it's because the band is playing against its strengths. From a technical standpoint, Offer's not an amazing singer. He's terrific at sultry murmurs, yelps, and chants, and luckily, he stays in these modes for most of the album. He doesn't fare as well when he just sings, as we discover on "Sweet Life". For one thing, he sounds hesitant, and his outsized party-starter persona slips a bit. For another, his lyrics tend toward the absurd, and you can only get away with lines like "sleeping underneath the blanket of dread" if you deliver them with serious bluster. But middling memories of "Sweet Life" are quickly obliterated by the impossibly funky squelch of "Yadnus", which is also a turning point-- the album's final third sinks into relative abstraction. The last three tracks' murky digressions bring the album to a brainy close that's satisfying after the brawny pageantry of its front end. By sequestering the cerebral stuff that erratically peppered their prior albums to a closing come-down, Myth Takes, presents !!! as a band that's figured out exactly what it's good at. If they stay the course, continuing to streamline and focus, we can expect many fine albums to come.

-Brian Howe, March 02, 2007

[jaxxalude]

ALL MUSIC GUIDE

Artist
!!!
Album
Myth Takes
Rating

Release Date
Mar 6, 2007
Label
Warp

by Tim Sendra

Of all the dance punk revivalists, !!! have been the most consistently interesting and challenging, not to mention the group most likely to fill the dance floor on indie rock night. Their previous album, the political and righteous Louden Up Now, was good enough to vault them to the level of the bands that inspired them (Gang of Four, Pop Group, Liquid Liquid), Myth Takes firmly establishes them there. It's a different fire that burns here for !!!, mostly setting aside political concerns for fiery dance floor rave-ups, the band sound inspired and like they are plugged directly into a wall socket. The first three tracks are like opening a door and being blasted backward by a wall of flame and heat. Nic Offer's vocal chants, asides and strung together proclamations are more frantic than ever and when he turns it down a notch he sounds nearly sexy (as on "Must Be the Moon" a desperate story of sex and lust in the city). He has to be a live wire of energy to keep up with the band, who burn brightly and play like they have something to prove from beginning to end. Especially Justin Van Volgen, whose bass work underpins the freewheeling walls of chik-ing guitars with a fluid and funky bottom. His production is a masterwork of balancing and blending a kaleidoscope of guitars, drums, percussion, keys, fix and vocals. The record could have easily sounded like a mess but he makes it sound alive and raw. When !!! finally slow things down after the that initial burst, they do some interesting things -- "Heart of Hearts" is a dance floor-filler that manages to sound menacing and rubbery at the same time, "Break In Case of Anything" is a kitchen-sink funk epic that has elements of disco, dub, hip hop and a killer horn section, and "Yadnus", a fun mash-up of glitter drumbeats, tough guy vocals, chicken scratch guitars and sweeping synths. The only tracks that let the side down a bit are the slightly generic "Bend Over Beethoven" which sounds like something they could have come up with in their sleep and the ballad that ends the album, "Infiniford". Offer's vocals don't suit the somber mood very well and it's a down note to end such a wild ride of an album. These stumbles aside, Myth Takes is a thrilling success. Not too many bands even in heyday of the initial wave of dance punk released records as full of energy, intelligence and ferocious funk as this.

[Damage]

I just love the name. I'm not even a big fan of the music, from the few songs I've heard. But the name is just ill.

[jaxxalude]

THE A.V. CLUB

!!!
Myth Takes
(Warp)

Reviewed by Noel Murray
March 6th, 2007

The bi-coastal dance-punk ensemble !!! drew a lot of heat after the release of its sublime 2003 party single "Me And Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard," but the band responded with an album, Louden Up Now, that was kind of a whiff. Too short—with a good chunk of its running time taken up by doodling interludes and a reprise of "Me And Giuliani"—Louden Up Now made even some of the band's devotees wonder if !!!'s ecstatic live shows could ever be replicated on CD for any sustained length.

The band's third album, Myth Takes, answers that question with a qualified "yes." Far more rounded than Louden Up Now, the new record follows !!!'s tautly funky jams down multiple generic paths, as on the album-opening title track, which combines noir-ish rockabilly and eerie industrial whistling. The song "Myth Takes" is also refreshingly short—just two-and-a-half minutes—and yet fully realized. Myth Takes contains plenty of typically !!!-ian sprawling songs, like the thrillingly cacophonous "Bend Over Beethoven," but this time out the band has learned to be compact, too. The album's best song, "All My Heroes Are Weirdos," stacks up marching-band cadences and Talking Heads-style Afrobeat, and gets in and out in just over three minutes, leaving pulses still racing.

The major stumbling blocks of !!!'s shtick still pertain. The band's lyrics are mostly half-assed slogans, and its method of building up songs through hours of jamming means that they all tend to fall into the same basic "everybody disco!" pattern. But on Myth Takes, those patterns have become more complex and full, and capable of creating subtle moods, as on the single "Heart Of Hearts," which rumbles to life like the city streets at dawn. And even when !!! repeats itself, it does so in a way that's touchingly human. Myth Takes has the communal warmth of musicians playing together, adding one piece at a time until everything sounds all chummy.

A.V. Club Rating: B+

[joker]

Stylus Magazine Review

!!!
Myth Takes
Warp
2007
Rating: A-

Reviewed by: Mallory O’Donnell
Reviewed on: 2007-03-08

Whatever monosyllabic clacking sound repeated thrice this band goes by (though no one really calls them anything other than Chk Chk Chk), they’re tough to quantify in the usual terms. They're undoubtedly a rock group but they're signed to Warp, a label defined by unflinching affiliations with the electronic music community and virtually none elsewhere. Their music is inherently danceable, but their choice of remixers (Maurice Fulton, Rub n' Tug, LFO) is far more eccentric than hip, which can’t be said about their contemporaries in the dance-rock non-community. Their releases span the divide from skeletal post-punk to indie-funk treble-fests to melodically anemic jams equal parts Can and Liquid Liquid. They’re responsible for two of the greatest singles of the last five years: the first ("Me & Guiliani"), a complex, multi-layered "song" with at least four discernible movements; the latter ("Take Ecstasy With Me" / "Get Up"), a double A-side that squeezes the Moby Grapejuice out of both Magnetic Fields and Nate Dogg. Their three full-length releases sound almost nothing alike as objective packages, yet all are unmistakably the work of the same band.

This is all well and good. None of it, however, really prepares the average listener for Myth Takes. Sure, Nic Offer still sings like he's somewhat embarrassed but totally turned-on to be singing for a real live rock band, the bass/drums/rhythm-guitar combo still dominate the proceedings, and all eight of them would need a thorough grooming before attempting the sartorial elegance of, say, the Strokes. But nearly all of the excess fat that burdened or buoyed their earlier efforts has been ruthlessly trimmed off here. Ten songs coming in shy of fifty minutes might not be a world-beater for your average emo band, but for a bunch of guys whose last single weighed in at more than a third of that, it's like John Holmes reborn as a castrato.

By and large, this newfound economy serves !!! quite well. The first and title track is immediately engaging, grooving in a reverb-soaked alternate universe where the Cramps and A Certain Ratio can get down and boogie in about the same time it took Link Wray to "Rumble." "All My Heroes Are Weirdos" ratchets up the frenetic pogoing a notch, but all the time-signature shifting is really just prog garnish gracing the classic indie dish of fast-and-slow, swimming in a sauce of distorted guitars and urbane "tribal" drumming. "Must Be the Moon" rattles along on an unmissable booty-commanding bassline and Offer’s standard lyrical bluntness, only instead of President Bush or the ex-Mayor of New York, his target is a quivering pair of thighs brought into harsh relief by the Earth’s sole satellite, that classic scapegoat of opium-benumbed poets of yore. Such brazen sexuality is hardly unexplored territory in a rock tune, but it says something for !!! and their semi-reluctant singer that all the panty-soaking action here comes at the expense, rather than the exercise of, his fragile male ego. "A New Name" and "Heart of Hearts" are the sound of !!! integrating side project Out Hud (now sadly defunct) into the corpus of the "real" band; the former a shimmering, dubby landscape of rapidly picked guitar and block-rocking bass, the latter a compelling argument for the sake of old-school house music performed by a rock band—drums echoing up from the basement, diva vocals deployed without shame, and bass taking the place of static sample-programming.

There's only one real gaffe on Myth Takes, and it arrives right at midpoint. "Sweet Life" is a pairing of unappealing partners, squiggly analog psych-rock mated with ham-fisted progressions and overvocalizing that could easily be mistaken for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who (coincidentally or not) have taken !!! under their unenviable wing for an upcoming tour. Thankfully, everything afterwards is gravy.

Less cohesive than your usual masterpiece but with a sense of unclouded enjoyment that most of those efforts often can't muster, Myth Takes is ultimately the kind of thing that's loads more fun to listen to than talk about. All of which means a band headed in precisely the right direction, towards that mythical land where critics and haters fear to tread lest they lose their carefully-cultivated sheen of disdain and surrender to the funky chicken. If Louden Up Now was the sound of !!! trying to integrate their fusion of conflicting ideas and failing admirably, Myth Takes is the band not giving a damn and succeeding improbably at something even more interesting. In a rock landscape crowded with oft-predictable scene-makers, !!! have unquestionably owned their own curious, distinct patch of turf. The evidence proffered by Myth Takes suggests them to be more pioneers than squatters, though, because right now they're perched on a plot you just might want to own a piece of, too.

[jaxxalude]

SLANT


!!!
Myth Takes
by Jimmy Newlin
Posted: March 7, 2007

f the punk rock of the 1970s abided by a less-is-more philosophy—shorter songs, easier arrangements, zero costumes or concept albums, etc.—than the credo of new-millennium indie rockers is that more-is-the-new-less. I saw !!! open for Modest Mouse four or five years ago and it seemed like there were a couple dozen more people on stage than in the audience of the mid-sized venue. All sorts of instruments were being banged, plucked, strummed, and tooted, and the din was only barely governed by Nic Offer, a scrawny guy in a dashiki bouncing around the stage recklessly, even though there was barely room to stand, much less dance. By contrast, the headlining Mice weren't just modest: they were demure.

With their un-Google-able name (pronounced "chk-chk-chk") and a whole lot of attitude, !!! continue to try get your groove thang shook by insisting that Remain In Light is the only album that matters. The differences between Myth Takes and earlier !!! albums are cursory—the lyrics are less politically-minded, the arrangements a little fuller and noisier—but diversity isn't really the point here. !!!'s records and live shows are defiant in a way other dance acts' are not: there's a party going on, but you're not necessarily invited. Notice how Offer's vocals on Myth Takes' best track, "All My Heroes Are Weirdos," tease and snarl like a schoolyard bully who won't share his Tonka truck. Backed by "I Zimbra"-style guitars and a rhythm section that almost certainly includes a few trashcan lids, "Heroes" is !!! is at their best: both alluring and daunting. The band is clearly the punkest of the disco-punk acts.

But then, didn't disco-punk die around the time The Rapture signed to Motown and nobody cared? Sounding 20 years out of date—i.e. like Talking Heads—is hip; sounding two or three years out of date is stale, particularly in a blog-equipped scene, where you can be sick of a record weeks before its release date. Plus, not unlike the weaker Elephant 6 albums (the scene to which !!! is more than a little indebted), Myth Takes can emphasize sound over craft. Considering that the band rarely departs from the same tribal drumbeat, there are only so many different blips and bloops you can hear before you start to wonder where the melodies are. But it's their party and they can compose if they want to. The fact is, Myth Takes is a record that's tough not to enjoy, even while you're wondering if you shouldn't.

[jaxxalude]

PREFIXMAG

!!!
Myth Takes

Release Date: March 6, 2007
Label: Warp
By: Brian Reid
7.0 out of 10

With the dance-punk invasion of 2003 properly chewed up and spit out, maybe it's time for us to acknowledge that the novelty is gone and what's left is here to stay. Indie music has taken on a decidedly more danceable tone in the past few years, and with new releases from the Class of 2003 (!!!, LCD Soundsystem, the Rapture), dance-punk has stepped back out of its corner and etched itself a bona-fide slot in the spectrum.



Louden Up Now (2004), the previous album from !!!, was much lauded (some say it's the best the genre has to offer) and had moments of genius: "Pardon My Freedom" and "Hello? Is this Thing On?" were dynamic and mesmerizing centerpieces. But that album was full of songs that weren't as successful. In much the same way, Myth Takes is punctuated by moments of great ambition--moments that may be impossible to carry throughout an entire album.



The band's biggest asset is the bravado and over-the-top charisma of vocalist Nic Offer, and the musicians' tremendous chops, restless creative spirit and pounding yet danceable rhythms allow him to realize his potential. But it's Offer's performance that defines !!!. The band has generally two types of songs: those where the spotlight is on Offer as he gallivants around in whatever way he chooses; and the groove-oriented songs that focus more on tempo, instrumentation and arrangement. On this album, the line between these types is significant. Opener "Myth Takes" is a two-and-a-half-minute tribal ditty with a driving bass line, chiming flute and classic !!! absurdist lyrics like "sha sha sha sha sha doobie/sometimes it's really just like the movies." Throbbing bass, insistent drumbeat and soaring, passionate vocals make up "Must Be the Moon," in which Offer tries to make sense of casual romantic encounters. "Bend Over Beethoven" may be !!!'s most adventurous and ambitious track yet. It's an expansive and atmospheric extended funk jam with a solid groove foundation. Offer starts out with some spacey longings then shifts to a commanding vocal mood by the chorus--this is all before a three-minute-plus buildup of feedback, energy and instrumentation. By the breaking point, it's clear that !!!'s ambitions are so grand that an album's worth of moments like this may be too exhaustive to create.



And after all that, we get tracks like "Yadnus," "A New Name" and "Break in Case of Anything." They're typical !!! mid-album fodder; they're semi-interesting but do nothing to add to the existing triumphs of the album. As previous albums did, Myth Takes sees !!! aiming high in terms of grandiosity and intensity but falling short of its ambitions. But that the band can achieve those heights at all--even if sporadically--is something to appreciate.

[jaxxalude]

DROWNED IN SOUND

!!!: Myth Takes
Out: 05/03/2007
Label: Warp Records

Here it is, then: the soundtrack to your summer house party par excellence, signed, sealed and delivered a good few months early just ‘cause it’s that good. Get your dancing practice in now – come the longest days of the year you’ll be wearing many a sole down to Myth Takes.

!!!’s third long-play release – their second for Warp, very much a label of the moment what with the forthcomings from Maximo Park and Battles – is their best yet: it’s multi-faceted like no release before it (from the band’s catalogue), and each and every nuance is super funky. Yes, the word’s permitted here. Just don’t go dressing it up with ‘punk’ prefixes.

The album’s opening trio – the title track, into the effortlessly effervescent ‘All My Heroes Are Weirdos’, into the super disco stomp of ‘Must Be The Moon’ – are, in all probability, unlikely to be bettered this year so far as future dance-rock crossover releases go. The three songs set a fantastic tone – one of arm-waving, hand-clapping, toe-tapping exuberance – that fails to relent for the duration. You’ll be sitting on the bus, in front of the telly, on a park bench, at your mother-in-law’s, it doesn’t matter – you’ll dance to these songs like you’ve never danced to any band with guitars – gasp! – before. Pump the first ten minutes of Myth Takes into any club in the country, in any backwater town full of squaddie fucks and fuck-about forty-somethings, and the floor will go crazy.

And it just gets better, unexpectedly and brilliantly: lead single ‘Heart Of Hearts’ sits neatly at five of ten, throbbing aggressively and seductively at the centre of this intoxicating album. The purest dance song on this collection, the interaction between the male and female vocals lend the song an air of Prince circa being good trying his hand at Euro House, or whatevertheshit makes the top ten week in week out without the likes of this writer hearing it. Y’know, the stuff sold as ring tones to those same inbred sorts busting a million moves a second a paragraph earlier. But this you know – the song’s out, available, and if you’re smart you’ve already got it.

What you won’t have yet – unless you’ve picked this album up as soon as it was released (t’other day) – is ‘Bend Over Beethoven’. This eight-minute workout of strut-funk bass lines and crisp beats doesn’t outstay its welcome despite that intimidating count on the clock, and as vocals fade in and out over drifting guitars and skittered percussion you can feel something welling within, and then POP!(!!) The dam’s down, the valley’s flooded, you’re on your chair grinding against an invisible partner for every passer-by to stare at. They’re not embarrassed for you, though; they want to be you.

That being the case, they’re advised to collect this from their local record store and report back to you around July time, when we can all dance in unison to what will, come December, be recognised as the year’s finest album of its kind.

Rating:
Words: Mike Diver

[jaxxalude]

CONTACTMUSIC

!!! (Chk Chk Chk)
Myth Takes
Album Review

Now then. Do you, like me, ever wonder if/when Warp Records will falter? Well if you do, consider this to be yet another leaf in the immaculately crafted masterpiece that is the Warp bible. 'Myth Takes', the third album from Brooklyn based septet !!!, chk chk chk to you and me. Since the last album, 'Louden Up Now', the chk'sters have built themselves a reputation as one of the best live acts around today, and have recently toured with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Right then, so how does the new album stand...well lets see shall we.

The title track opens things up, and its straight down to business. What hits me first is just how much crisper their sound is, they've clearly spent a lot longer on the production than before, and it really works. If you'd told me that, I would have mourned the loss of the rough edges, however hearing it for yourself is a totally different story. Track two 'All My Heroes Are Weirdos' is a headfirst dive into the deep end of the !!! sound. The percussion on this track marks a progression, drifting away from simply using drums for the beat. Great, but that's not all. As I said before they recently toured with the Chillies, and when I first heard this news, I was a bit taken aback. However upon hearing this album, I can see why. Now don't let this statement alarm you, but these guys have adorned something of a 'pop' edge.calm down, calm down. Some of the greatest music ever created has a pop influence, and it works, so why knock it? First single 'Heart Of Hearts' is a disco laden funk-fest. This is perfect choice for first single. It's melodic, pumping and rhythmic, and for once a band has managed to encapsulate the notion of a 'rave' tune in rock packaging, forget the Klaxons, or any of this other 'nu-rave' rubbish, they wouldn't know rave if it bit them on the arse.

With more elements being strewn into this already mish-mashed collection of influences, funk, rock, disco, techno, etc, it would be natural to assume that the band are having trouble keeping up with the evolution of their sound!? This just isn't so. They sound tighter than ever, and are more captivating than ever.So if you don't already know, make sure you get wind of these motherchkers before its too late!

Thom Holmes

[jaxxalude]

Lead singer Nic Offer is the provider of this week's Pitchfork Guest List. Pretty interesting, bold choices here, I must say.

[jaxxalude]

TINY MIX TAPES

!!!
Myth Takes
[Warp; 2007]

Styles: clutter-funk, dance squawk
Others: Soulwax, Talking Heads, The Rapture, Klaxons

I’ll thrust you straight into this since that’s what Myth Takes does. The album, the song; both hit the ground running, right in the middle of an unvarying lock-groove. From there the first half of the album blurs together, the songs largely indistinguishable from each other. They all have that spidery guitar part, they all sound cluttered with too much noise. They’re all skittery and overrun with tweaky guitar lines and poly-rhythms. What they’ve got here is the aural equivalent of flailing your arms madly.

But maybe I’m selling them short. !!!’s modus operandi has always been to incite their audience into movement, both rhythmic and, ostentatiously, political. Their punchiest moments came at the convergence of these ideals, where a loping, syncopated rhythm section backed Nic Offer’s cocky taunts, making the band seem dangerous and sexy at the same time. Plenty of people took Offer to task for posturing, claiming that the band did nothing to back up its incisiveness. They’re certainly not Rage, and while the riot-while-you-dance attitude was far more menacing on record than in results, it was probably the best outlet for Offer’s gruff thuggishness. On Myth Takes he backs off from his dick-sucking presidential offers in favor of more traditional dancefloor concerns like hooking up and party-rocking. Given Offer’s brutish delivery and limited range, the songs that work best find him transferring his self-assured swagger to sexual advances, rather than his attempts to chronicle awkward emotional fallout.

It’s not till the second half that the band chills the fuck out and lets the songs breathe a little. "Yadnus" opens with those stadium rave-up drums we all have ingrained in our skulls, adds a wah-wah squawk, and somehow ends up being one of the most compelling songs on the album. For the first time, !!!’s relentless stomp, present on every track thus far, finally feels formidable. The band don’t fire on all cylinders, giving each instrument time to find its place before getting sucked into the whole.

With repeated listens you begin to pick out all sorts of interesting bits buried within the music; with any luck, some remixers will be able to pull them out and isolate them, streamlining these grooves into 12"s that aren’t so prickly. Seeing these guys live, it’s not hard to feel compelled to dance, but as it stands, Myth Takes isn’t ready to take over the club. Even "Inifold," the record’s bleary-eyed comedown and most direct bid at touchy-feeliness is contaminated by swirly noises when it would’ve been much more potent with just the piano and string parts.

There was a time when I found !!!’s brash strut exhilarating, the perfect union of punk arrogance and disco suave. Maybe if I’d heard Myth Takes with virgin ears I could have appreciated it as a prime example of jittery anxiousness, but taken within the context of !!!’s (and, by default, OUT HUD’s) legacy, it doesn’t feel like a step in any particular direction so much as a million ideas left to duke it out. Just look at the cover, absolutely teeming with activity. Perhaps over time this album will establish a mythical world of its own, the soundtrack to a supernatural carnal rager. Fittingly, !!! is the only band name the whole animal kingdom can pronounce.

1. Myth Takes
2. All My Heroes Are Weirdos
3. Must Be The Moon
4. A New Name
5. Heart Of Hearts
6. Sweet Life
7. Yadnus
8. Bend Over Beethoven
9. Break In Case Of Anything
10. Infinifold

by Path

[jaxxalude]

ROLLING STONE

!!!
Myth Takes
RS: 3 of 5 Stars

Brooklyn's !!! (pronounced "chick chick chick") have been doing this groove-band shit since early this decade, and they've honed some key tricks: Expertly modulated tension-and-release and modest atmospherics are routinely deployed on their third album, as are Tourettic hype-man vocals. Tunes? Not a ton, though there are more here than on earlier efforts, including the damn catchy "Must Be the Moon." !!!'s dark grooves are nicely varied, from the tumbling funk of "All My Heroes Are Weirdos" to the almost-psych-rock "Yadnus." Tedium is a problem, but danceability is a given. And if you don't feel like shaking ass to this at first, try it with drugs.

CHRISTIAN HOARD

[jaxxalude]

VILLAGE VOICE

!!!
Myth Takes
Warp

Mythbusters
Brooklyn dance-punk octet frees minds most adeptly when their mouths are shut
by Mikael Wood

Listening to !!! for the lyrics is dumber than reading Playboy for the articles. Really, it's like reading Playboy for the paper cuts—only instead of injuring your fingers, singer Nic Offer's words hurt your head. "Sometimes it really glitters/And sometimes it's even gold," dude sings in the title track from Myth Takes. "But baby, when it isn't/Then it must be rock 'n' roll." Craig Finn doing Billy Joel doing the guy from Wolfmother: not a good look.

As anyone who's seen one of the Brooklyn band's delirious live shows can attest, what you come to !!! for is groove—no other group in Indieland are as committed to turning the beat around. Myth Takes, their third album, throbs with endless motion: "All My Heroes Are Weirdos" has abandoned-warehouse oil-barrel blasts that restyle Einstürzende Neubauten as disco divas; "Yadnus" swipes Gary Glitter's patented glam-shuffle swing, then piles on shivery post-punk guitars; "A New Name" does for the tambourine what "House of Jealous Lovers" did for the cowbell.

Yet even if the lyrics actively discourage the application of your undivided attention, this is !!!'s most songful work yet—a surprising development, given that Myth Takes is the band's first full-length for Warp, where songfulness is valued even less than showmanship. "Sweet Life," for instance, adheres to a tidy verse-chorus structure (and features one of the group's catchiest vocal hooks), while "Heart of Hearts," with guest female vocals from Shannon Funchess, harkens back to the hair-metal r&b En Vogue invented on Funky Divas. "Must Be the Moon" must be the octet's bid for a dance-punk breakthrough: Never before have they condensed their eternal churn down to such a potent piece of pop. The effect, perhaps, of covering Nate Dogg and Magnetic Fields on a 2005 EP. It's 45 minutes of funk in a five-minute chunk.

[jaxxalude]

AVERSION

Myth Takes
!!!
Warp Records


How times have changed. It used to be that funk-punk and dance-punk outfits would sell their own grandmothers into sex slavery just to convince us they meant business. And how they had so many tricks do to it: art-punk posturing, a revivalist's keen eye for historical detail and -- !!!'s favorite trick -- vicious socio-political commentary. Yes, dance-punk, was serious business.

On Myth Takes, !!! joins the growing number of onetime serious funk/dance punks who are through being cool, done with proving themselves. Like The Rapture, !!! makes an about face with its latest, flushing all the self-important ideology of Louden Up Now (2004, Touch and Go) in favor of straightforward dance music. Hey, with grooves this big, the dance floor's going to be too crowded without politicking clogging things up.

That's not to say !!!'s any less inventive on Myth Takes. Tossing out the soapbox-shouting manifestos only served to narrow the band's focus. What was once a jazzed-up Gang of Four approach becomes a sexy and stylized new face of funk that keeps all of the punk bite in !!!'s sound. "All My Heroes are Weirdoes" turns a choppy funk guitar figure loose in a funhouse of slithering bass lines, electronic sleet and hail and the sort of groove big enough to get even a wall-hugging emo kid shaking his ass on the dance floor. "Bend Over Beethoven" takes abstract and funky guitar noodling on a journey to the center of the mind, and "New Name" sounds like !!!'s trying to cram The Family Stone into The Gang of Four's tour bus. A couple downtempo numbers -- an oddly workable funk/dub crossover in "Sweet Life" and a doom-ridden, Liars-like "Infiniford" -- will give you a bit of time to wipe the sweat off your brow and finish off your drink, but Myth Takes is single-mindedly focused on its dance side. What's more, it pays off: !!!'s no longer nipping at the heels of its dance-punk and art-funk influences; Myth Takes is inventive -- and just darn good enough -- to make !!! a lifetime member of the dance-punk innovators' society.

Beyond !!!'s successful attempt to tear funk-punk out of the clutches of its post-punk past, Myth Takes is a subtle acknowledgement that !!! has reached critical mass. No longer needing any of the gimmicks the various flavors of dance-punk bands used to get past music-snob defenses, it's the clearest indication that the indie underground's not just ready to dance, but ready to dance without burdening itself with the need to foul up dance with clumsy concepts, pretense and credibility-proving efforts.

- R. Paul Matthews

[joker]

!!! announce US dates
The band announce dates following Coachella

www.nme.com/news//27026

!!! have announced details of a US tour.

The jaunt includes an appearance at the Coachella Festival in California on April 28.

The band will joined by the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Jarvis Cocker, Arcade Fire and Kaiser Chiefs at the bash.

The band will play the following US dates:

San Francisco The Fillmore (April 28)
Coachella Festival (29)
Eugene McDonald Theatre (May 1)
Portland Someday Lounge (2)
Vancouver Richard's on Richards (4)
Edmonton The Starlite Ballroom (6)
Saskatoon Amigo's (7)
Winnipeg Pyramid Cabaret (8)
Minneapolis Fine Line Music Café (9)
Philadelphia Theatre of Living Arts (15)
New York Bowery Ballroom (16)
Boston Axis (17)
Montreal Les Saints (18)
Toronto Lee's Palace (19)

[joker]

And coming in at #195 is the fresh studio offering from !!!, Myth Takes, scanning 4,200 copies.

Haha, sweet! Welcome to the big chart!

[oscillations.]

lmao
Go, !!!

Seriously, though. I like their music, but what an INTOLERABLE band name.

[jaxxalude]

BLENDER

!!!
Myth Takes

(Warp)
Release Date: 3/6/2007

Brooklyn dance-rock legion cranks up the guitars, makes best album.
Reviewed by Douglas Wolk



The eight members of !!! (pronounced chk chk chk) are finally bugging out in the same direction. Their first two albums were wildly promising (if occasionally inchoate) dance music by coffee-nerved punk alumni with political axes to grind. But now they’ve figured out how to make their whomping dance tracks double as rock by assigning crucial rhythmic roles to sour, bleary guitar parts: The one-chord floor-shaker “Heart of Hearts” wouldn’t be nearly as rousing if the echoing guitars in the coda were in tune. They’re also a lot more mission-oriented — even the songs that push the six-minute mark proceed directly to the hook. Too bad about the self-important, chanted lyrics, which rattle on even when the band’s trying to stretch out and groove.

Download: “Bend Over Beethoven,” “Heart of Hearts”

[jaxxalude]

THIS IS FAKE DIY

!!! (Chk Chk Chk) - Myth Takes
Artist: !!! (Chk Chk Chk)

Release Date: 05/03/07
Label: Warp
Rating:

If movie bigwigs were to ever remake Godzilla again, we'd want !!! to be involved. So instead of the big, hairy ape clumping its way around skyscrapers, a gaggle of gangly dance-punkers would gallop through the streets of New York causing all sorts of percussion-related boogy chaos, the likes of which haven't been seen since Studio 54 spilt out onto the street in the 70s. We're not sure if Matthew Broderick would get involved, but whatever. He was rubbish anyway.

'Myth Takes' sees !!! throwing off the chains of now-yawnsome 'punk-funk' (a tag they've been tarred with for most of their existence) and, like LCD Soundsystem, decided to take their sound to a whole other level of amazingness. Where their previous two albums were filled with sprawling bass-funk monsters, 'Myth Takes' shuffles and twists like the coolest dad at the coolest wedding in the world, keeping their frenetic, funky boom-bass but slicing off any unnecessary bits: the title track stomping along with spaghetti western guitar and vocalist Nic Offer's trademark hushed non-melodies, while 'All My Heroes Are Weirdos' clang-funks its way into your brain with all the subtlety of an six foot wasp.

Elsewhere, 'Heart Of Hearts' and 'Bend Over Beethoven' ensure !!! will be soundtracking dancefloors across the globe for months to come, the former being a futuristic grime-pop soul masterpiece, the latter being an eight minute funk-rock epic, which DIY genuinely hopes is dedicated to 'doing the dirty' with the long-dead German composer. Or the cuddly movie star dog of the same name. You wouldn't get that on a Kooks album.

Though fans of their previous 'Louden Up Now!' and self-titled debut might find 'Myth Takes' streamlined oddball pop hard to swallow, this is nontheless an album that renders their 'punk-funk' copyists utterly redundant: this is the sound of a band who are just gagging to blow your mind.

Matt Barnes

================================//=============================

Any review that disses The Kooks for the totally anonymous band they are gets my vote.

[jaxxalude]

Paul Fisher says "I Feel Like Chk Chk Chk'n Tonight" at Playlouder.

[Chromeozone]

I can't stop playing "Must Be the Moon," but when the dude raps he sounds like Aaron Carter :(

[jaxxalude]

EYE WEEKLY

!!!
Myth Takes
Warp

Drifting around somewhere in the space between jam band and club candy, the punctuationally plentiful !!! (“chk chk chk”) stuff their all-night disco-freak dance party into the 48 minutes of Myth Takes. Again attempting to capture the shake and sweat of their ecstatic live show, !!!'s third full-length successfully boils it down, siphons it off and wraps it up neat. Songs such as “Sweet Life” and the first single “Heart of Hearts” have catchy choruses; “Break in Case of Anything” pops horn shots over a Peter Gabriel groove; and “All My Heroes Are Weirdos” crackles with percussion breaks. But Myth Takes is not without its myth steps. As varied as the 10 selections may be, what makes for good dancing is not always the most engaging listen, and where the two-and-a-half-minute title track is all exclamation, eight minutes of “Bend Over Beethoven”

CHRIS BILTON

[joker]

Missed the Top 200 this week:

-- 195 -- !!! MYTH TAKES 2434 6761

[joker]

!!!: The band with an unpronounceable moniker

!!! are dynamic musicians with a lot to talk about, says Elisa Bray
Published: 29 March 2007


Asking !!!'s singer Nic Offer and guitarist Mario Andreoni about their choice of unpronounceable band name at the end of our meeting at a north London pub prompts a barrage of agonised groaning.

"As much as I hate explaining what it is, I still can't think of a better name," Offer asserts. "And I challenge every journalist to give me a better name." Leaving no time for a response, they chime triumphantly: "We win!" They chose their name - your choice of any three repetitive sounds - to stand out from the crowd, but paradoxically it has made them the hardest band name to find in a record store and impossible to Google.

"Hence the 'chk chk chk', which I despise," Andreoni says, his voice tinged with acrimony. "The people in the corporations decided to channel us into this... thing."

It is this "channeling" that the band fight hard to avoid. Deliberately leaving their name open to the individual's interpretation symbolises the band's philosophy: the refusal to adhere to rules and their resolve to push boundaries; everything goes. When the seven members (now eight) formed 10 years ago, they were united by the desire to break free from the punk and ska scene of their hometown Sacramento, California, and create something new. In the face of ridicule from their peers, their dynamic post-punk funk, incorporating elements of disco, Krautrock, techno, hip-hop and rock, was born.

Offer recalls: "We were laughed at and looked at like dumb kids. We were doing something that wasn't cool.

"All the great things that I've got in my life came from me making a very brave decision. Even deciding to play this kind of music - at the time we decided to play it there was nobody else doing it and everyone was like 'You're going to play funk?'

"Even when we started incorporating elements of disco, disco was still totally a dirty word."

Offer unashamedly cites his favourite disco soul artists: Norman Whitfield and Grace Jones' collaborations with Sly and Robbie. Andreoni, who grew up listening to the Bee Gees, KC and The Sunshine Band and his older brothers' Led Zeppelin records, chooses "Give Me Your Love" by the Sisters Love for being "a disco song for all intents and purposes", while simultaneously being one of the songs he finds most deeply affecting. Offer's starting point was the Bee Gees' greatest hits. Alongside the disco artists, both musicians are keen to emphasise their love of Neil Young.

Andreoni explains: "In this band we never saw those lines. That's what brought us together. When we decided to pursue this kind of music it excited us about playing together. We were invigorated."

New album Myth Takes is just as invigorating, building on the political themes of their 2004 album Louden Up Now. Using the overriding theme of "myth" to make their anti-war and anti-corporation statements, there is a complex ideological and thematic depth to their compelling high-octane punk-funk. In "All My Heroes Are Weirdos" they use the 2,000-year-old story of Nero to represent their views on the current political climate. Offer explains: "Trying to say Bush is bad and he's this and that is somewhat ineffective so we tried to connect it to this myth. Maybe by making it a story it would wake people up to the reality of the situation.

"The song is not only a critique of Bush but it's a critique of the Democratic party. They didn't put a hero up. The song calls for someone who says something different."

"I'm passionate against this institutionalised politics. Democracy really isn't alive. I think that's a myth," Andreoni adds, following with a disenchanted diatribe against Bush, ex-president Reagan and aggressive parking attendants. Suddenly self-aware, he pauses and says: "This just got really heavy all of a sudden. I apologise. I just drank a lot of coffee."

It's the day after they supported Warp label-mates Maximo Park, and !!! speak with the intense energy of their characteristically visceral performances - sometimes for several minutes of unbroken speech. Offer's excited fervour is synonymous with New York where he now lives. While most of the members moved to Brooklyn, Andreoni and Allan Wilson live on the opposite side of America, in California and Portland respectively. The distance may have made rehearsing difficult, but they have developed their approach to song writing which used to revolve purely around jamming. Now they start off with specific ideas brought by the individual for the band to work on during a focused two or three week session, creating newfound discipline in their work.

Living in New York was also the inspiration behind the theme of Myth Takes. The title track - a lesson to those who seek the trappings of being in a famous rock band - illustrates people moving to the Big Apple to chase the rock 'n' roll myth of "New York discos and cocaine" and wanting to be the Rolling Stones.

Offer explains: "It's just a story of what we saw in New York. It ties in with the Icarus myth, where you ultimately end up falling on your face. "Everyone knows that the cocaine and the egos are ultimately what brings you down and that the money is what kills you and everyone still goes for it. It's a rock 'n' roll myth, everyone's chasing it.

"It only takes a little bit of a glimmer. There's really not that much that separates you from Mick Jagger at the end of the day. So it's that fine line between a myth take, like with a legend, and a mistake."

The myth analogy stems from the rock 'n' roll songs and musical heroes who inspired Offer as he grew up and the assertion "All of My Heroes Are Weirdos" was meant wholeheartedly. Offer claims Prince, Iggy, Sonic Youth and The Beatles as his rock 'n' roll heroes, and elevates Morrissey as his "single biggest hero" while calling him "the ultimate weirdo". Offer says: "Morrissey was the one who made you realise that it was ok to be weird. If you don't want to play football you're weird. It was ok to not be like the other guys."

But do they still feel the same all these years later?

Offer admits: "I definitely feel like just another dumb kid who's looked at as something different. You realise that all rock 'n' rollers are really just dorks. You have to be a dork if you're going to spend that much time on music. If you're going to spend enough time on it to be any good you're a dork. So you spend enough time being a dork then eventually you get to this other level where then they let you be the coolest person ever." So which level have they reached?

"The coolest person ever..." they mumble, laughing off the suggestion. But perhaps, in pushing the boundaries and not being afraid to do their own thing, they really are.

They may have been together 10 years, but things keep progressing. Last year they toured with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, playing to stadium crowds of 20,000 people. Now they have embarked on their biggest tour yet.

"We just hope we can keep taking steps up and keep making relevant records," Offer says.

Andreoni adds: "I don't know whether it's naïve, but as artists you feel that you're going to be onto something that's going to be the next thing. I think that's exciting."

!!!'s album 'Myth Takes' is out now on Warp Records