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Post by joker on Mar 29, 2007 13:05:19 GMT -5
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Post by busyboy on May 2, 2007 17:23:50 GMT -5
!!! Already Itching To Return To StudioMay 02, 2007, 12:00 PM ET Gary Graff, Detroit !!!'s new Warp album, "Myth Takes," has only been out since early March, but the group is already "keen to get back to the studio," multi-instrumentalist John Pugh tells Billboard.com. "I'd like to at least do some new versions of songs from this record," he explains. "I don't know if you'd call them remixes, though. We've been playing around with this thing on tour where we took the last kind of rave-up instrumental break from 'Bend Over Beethoven' and developed it into its own little entity that's really stripped down and a completely different texture for the band. "I'm keen to turn that into a proper 12-inch for DJs to use," he continues. "We think it could be a little treat for people who have been hanging out with 'Myth Takes' for awhile and know the record. And then maybe some other songs will come out while we're in doing that." !!! may find it hard to find time for a studio trip, however. The octet is touring North America through late May and then heads over to Europe for a series of gigs and festivals before returning to play Lollapalooza on Aug. 5 in Chicago. And Pugh, who's getting married during a June break from the tour, says!!! does not tend to be prolific on the road. "We haven't figured out the right way to write on the road," he says. "Dealing with Europe, especially, is like going to another planet, and there's a lot of driving and not a lot of down time where you can sit with the band and some instruments and just jam, which is what we really like to do a lot. So we probably have to wait until we can get back to an environment where we can just hole up in a room together again." That said, nobody in the band is complaining about having to play live. "We kind of struggle to find a way to make every show something where we feel a connection to the audience and feed of fit in a way," Pugh says. "We're not there just to look pretty and pose and play our songs perfectly every night. We're there to have a party with you and turn it into a visceral experience more than, 'Let's go watch this band like we watch TV at home.' We require engagement."
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Post by joker on May 5, 2007 13:11:23 GMT -5
!!! gives fans permission to shake a tail featherVancouver, take solace. If Allan Wilson, percussionist and sax player for dance-punk mavericks !!! is to believed, we are not the only city with a Footloose-like aversion to cutting a rug. "Everyone always says to us 'I can't believe you made Portland dance!', or 'I can't believe you made people in Chicago dance!', or even 'I can't believe you made people in London dance'. We hear it all the time–I guess that's a problem all over." Wilson, on his cellphone hurtling up the I-5 to San Francisco, is addressing !!!'s last show in Vancouver, where his eight-piece band managed to get every single body in a packed Plaza nightclub dancing like your dad at a wedding. "I don't know why people have such an [aversion to] dancing. Maybe because they're too cerebral, maybe they just need, like, permission." And there, Wilson may have summed up the appeal of his band thus far: it gives fans the chance to shake a tail feather and still maintain their self-respect. !!! (pronounced "chk-chk-chk", or if you prefer, any percussive sound repeated three times) formed in Sacramento in 1996 but only really appeared on the radar with the 2003 single "Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard". The band subsequently thrust itself into critics' and audiences' hearts with the 2004 full-length, Louden Up Now. The music was undeniably groovy, yet the lyrics were political and dark enough to let any horn-rimmed, self-styled intellectual rip up the dance floor guilt-free. It's the end of the world, their music seemed to implore, so you may as well cut loose. With 2007's Myth Takes, the members of the group, now strewn across the country in Brooklyn, Nashville, and Portland, were presented with a new challenge: what comes after postapocalyptic? The answer, it turns out, is pop. "There's a lot of short songs on this new record, that I guess, yeah, are more like pop," agrees the affable Wilson. "I mean, with our last album, I think the shortest song was, like, six minutes. On this one, there's three-minute songs…. I feel like it's a more hopeful album, but Nic, who wrote a lot of the lyrics, he still thinks it's quite dark." Myth Takes is actually both light and dark. There are still songs with a brooding political bent to counter the nonstop disco beats (as on the Bush-lamenting "All My Heroes Are Weirdos"), but there are also new elements to be found. Softness (the Ian Brown-esque "Infinfold") and lust ("Must Be the Moon") abound, as well as hooks that stick like bubble gum on the sidewalk. As always, the songs are jam-packed with ideas, and the sound–driving, funky bass, and keys cribbed from early Talking Heads–is as infectious as ever. "We've been together for a long time, so we can tell each other 'Take this part out' or 'Stop doing that!'" says Wilson, who makes the idea of recording an album with seven other players sound easy. "You pick your battles." In total, Myth Takes makes !!! sound like a band that has given itself permission to grow up, if just a little. "I mean, we're all in our 30s now," Wilson reveals. "A couple of us are married, and some of us have kids, yeah, but I don't think it's affected us besides, like, from a tour-scheduling perspective. I mean, we still like to dance and have a good time. I still will be playing a show, dancing at five in the morning, and I think 'God, this is my job!'"
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Post by joker on May 7, 2007 17:52:29 GMT -5
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Post by joker on May 18, 2007 10:22:11 GMT -5
The Musicians of !!!: Making Their Own 'Myths'Listen to Nic Offer and Mario Andreoni on NPR's "All Things Considered."Offer and Andreoni talk about [their latest CD, as well as] the origins of the band's unusual name — which is generally pronounced "chk chk chk" (although that's not how the band intended it), how a high school marching band ended up on their CD, and what Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, D'Angelo and Fugazi have in common.
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