We don’t expect everyone to be down with all the funky fresh flavours we whore out to you week after week on this feature, but the ability to pronounce each band's name is usually a given.
In the past we've seen some funny and sometimes bizarre band names including Gay Against Your, Drumcorps, Fyreon and Cutting Pink With Knives. This week is a totally different kettle of onions. !!! is a name that is open for interpretation. It’s not as boring as exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Instead, !!! is pronounced by repeating thrice any monosyllabic sound. Chk Chk Chk is the most common pronunciation, but they could just as easily be called Pow Pow Pow, Bam Bam Bam, Uh Uh Uh, etc. Um… so that's that mini problem kind of sorted out.
Now after reading this feature and feeling compelled to go out and spend some of your hard-earned or dole-scrounged money on !!! releases, then you’ll all least be able to pronounce the name of the band without looking like a total twat when you say “They, er… have three exclamation marks for a name, seriously. I’m not making this up.”
Obviously, !!! are not the first band to model themselves on a symbol that makes it near impossible for radio presenters to announce their songs. Before the band Underworld formed into the legends they are today, they once went under the guise of Freur, which saw them use a symbol which looked like a prehistoric @ symbol which had mated with a 'w' which had had an affair with a backwards-looking 'c'. Confused? So are we, so don’t worry if that made absolutely bugger all sense to you.
Another person who makes no sense to us is wacky American polymath Prince, who once wanted to only be known by a vague squiggly thing. While the name was said to be a melding of the symbols for male and female, to us it's more like a stupid-arse shorthand for a midget who gets upset when his record label won't let him release wanky indulgent jazz-pop jam sessions. Boo hoo, if we had the chance of being a mega-selling rock 'n' roll star, we wouldn’t be too bothered what happened to us. – just as long as we got our slice of cash, tubs full of biatches and the finest takeaway food money can buy. Don’t go spare on the garlic sauce, now…
The only annoyance we have we !!! is that their band name is sending our spell checker in to sexual ecstasy as it tries to correct all of the apparent mistakes. Hell, this is a hard enough job most of the time, but this article must be really taking the biscuit.
Describing themselves as Healing & EasyListening / Electroacoustic / Progressive House the sound of !!! is yet another one that somehow manages to stand out from the crowd of over played, bland and same-sounding music like Razorlight. Something, as you all know, we hate. This New York eight-piece sit on top of a huge variety of sounds and are more than happy for you to know about. No clever studio trickery of creating sounds and effects that aren't theirs, it is a complete set-up which also transfers brilliantly to the stage, with instruments including a mini brass section, traditional drums, guitar and bass which are spread over cool-sounding electronics.
Creating a such a cool sound has already seen !!! support the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their last stadium tour jaunt. Even Geordie kids Maximo Park had them as a warm-up band on their last few dates. Both these bands are on one of the UK’s best independent record labels, Warp. With its world famous acts including Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Grizzly Bear to name but a few, you know Warp records won’t stand for any old shite. The label is constantly reinventing its sound to look for new and exciting music.
The music !!! make is not one that can be chucked into one genre. As their MySpace description states, they can fit in to many places at once. Never a bad thing as the appeal can split to music lovers of all genres, be it your electronic kid or even put on before going out to town for a night on the lash, the sound of !!! will fit it somewhere and could be sound tracked to at least one part of your daily routine. You need one of their three staggering albums in your life.
Read more:


{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I bought their new album, Myth Takes, at the weekend. Give it a go – it’s funky stuff.
Download a free mp3 here: http://music.download.com/chkchkchk/3600-8716_32-100434971.html
Then, buy all 3 albums, because you’ll need more.