!!! (CHK CHK CHK) CRAZY FOR YOU On their tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers last year, !!! (usually pronounced Chk Chk Chk, but anything goes really) road-tested new material from their just released album, 'Myth Takes'. While !!!'s dance-inspired hits may cause scenesters to bust a move in clubs across the open-minded and musically aware parts of the globe, lets just say things didn't go down too well with Chili Peppers' fans. "We had a night where we got hurled with bottles," confesses John Pugh, vocalist and percussionist for the group. "We just played a game the whole show dodging plastic bottles, which in a way made us play better ... Shows after that, John Frusciante would come out and go: 'We know this band, we asked them to be on this tour so be nice to them'. After that everyone was so polite and very quiet, which actually was not the desired effect. We'd rather them going crazy and throw bottles at us 'cause we're just trying to invoke craziness." Pugh's description of the US nine-piece ensemble goes right to the core of what the band is all about. Although !!! are often grouped into the dance-punk revival of the last few years, the group has been wildly charging into unknown territory since their inception around a decade ago. 'Myth Takes' is their third album and most acclaimed to date. Like their name, the music is a repetitive churning mess of electro, soul, funk and dance, at times manic and at times effortlessly chilled. It's the grown-up version of 2005's 'Louden Up', which saw the band spring into mainstream-indie consciousness. "I'm excited people like it but I feel that when the next record happens, it could be even better because there's still stuff y'know, unfinished business that we want to take it to the next step," explains Pugh of the hoo-hah surrounding 'Myth Takes'. "I think every new album by a group should be the best album you've every done right?" !!!'s world tour takes in a few dates in Australia and luckily we get them at the start of the circuit, their string of dates continuing until the end of April. Fans, however, should definitely get in to see them this time, because as Pugh explains, they're not going to be in this game forever. "The whole Chili Peppers experience, I think it did us a lot of good," he laughs. "Although we didn't learn much from the Chili Peppers themselves, I learnt that I do not want to be in a rock band when I'm 40. It's like, I don't want this to be my life, it's too weird! But saying that, the food was great, the catering was A1." Natalie Arnull !!! play The Columbian March 9. 'Myth Takes' is out now through Warp/Inertia. back to top ^

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