!!! (Chk Chk Chk)

!!! are the people’s band. So democratic are their strategies that even their band name is open to interpretation. Call them whatever you want, just so long as it’s a single syllable repeated three times over. Most people have settled for Chk Chk Chk, but Pow Pow Pow or Ug Ug Ug is fair game too. Personally, I’m privy to a Zit Zit Zit, as with each listen to the band, it feels like all my conventional ties with music are being briskly sliced away with the crisp zit of an artist’s pen knife.

Brooklyn’s eight-piece punk/funk/psychotrophic/prog/electro/guttural-wail-at-3am outfit reject the symbolic rules of social conduct, and instead communicate with a wild, unkempt and utterly thrilling language of their own. For a split second Rescue Rooms’ crowd is left dumbstruck by their gobbledygook, but after this moment of catharsis, re-invent themselves to respond in !!!’s new register of hip-gyrations, white-man funk-faces, coos, calls and cries. It’s the best gig this review has seen in the venue all year.

A sprawling eight-piece, they’re hell bent on making earnest journalists struggle to pin them down. Not only is their name unpronounceable, no member of them is pigeon-holed to their instrument, meaning one minute Nic is singing, the next it’s John. Then John’s on the drum kit, while Gorman pops out a trumpet and Tyler downs his bass and takes a break backstage.

Meandering dance epics of their critically acclaimed cult debut ‘Louden Up Now’, like statement of intent opener ‘When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Karazee’ are tempered by their new breed of aural audacity produced on their new album, ‘Myth Takes’. Reigned in but not tempered, tracks like ‘Yadnus’ stomp and throb with feral flame, but flourish with the added focus that time has allowed the band.

The music’s amazing. The spectacle’s just as overwhelming. Duel frontmen Nic and John spend as much time running through the crowd, dancing with people and scaling the balcony as they do on stage – a task made easier by their expensive radio microphones (they must have made some money off the first album then...) The place feels like one big party where everyone’s equal.

The show ends with a monumental stage invasion, and in place of an encore, John leads a tambourine led sing along of ‘Uh Uh Nottingham’ that goes on and on and on – people are so eager for the show to continue. Once they’ve left the stage, it’s as if a special wormhole to another time and place has been shut off, and we’re back in reality until the next time !!! call in on their travels.

!!!, mystifying, misunderstood a motion in music unto their own. As Nic’s repeated screams of ‘Does anybody here speak English?’ bleed through the monitors during the climax of ‘Hello? Is This Thing On?’, the shortcomings of our everyday lives are called into question. Sure, we all speak English. But why would we want to when !!! have invented a new language that’s so much more meaningful?

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.