We journey to the mystic East (end) on a quest to find the mysterious purveyors of funk and punk and good times. Led only by the esoteric symbol that is their mark, we venture deep into the land of the ironic mullet, past the myriad selection of curry shops and onto the temple of the people who reside in their own arses.
It’s a pet hate you see, this world of the achingly hip, the self ordained purveyors of taste and cool. Full of arrogant posers the atmosphere is unfriendly, spiky and coke fuelled. Such a shame as 93 Feet East is a superb venue, small (capacity of approx 500), intimate and loud it’s exactly the kind of place you want to see a band like !!!. To be fair Warp records have pulled it out of the bag, their DJ’s warm up the crowd by warping bass sounds and banging out the beats. Whilst there’s a lot of talk of the death of the dance scene in reality all that died was the super clubs and they had fuck all to do with the original ethos of dance music anyway. Whilst this isn’t the time or place to pontificate at length on the history and future of dance music suffice to say there’s some great stuff out there at the moment and Warp are one of the labels leading the way.
!!! take to the stage at 10pm, casually take their instruments and begin tuning up, or so it seems. For a couple of minutes you think they’re just checking everything’s in working order until before you know it there’s a groove forming. This soon turns into a bass heavy funky rhythm that catches us by surprise. Vocalist Nic Offer takes up the slack, jerking and shaking and barking into the microphone. There’s seven of them onstage, including bass player Tyler Pope who also plays with LCD Soundsystem, a two piece horn section, a drummer, a guitarist and a keyboard player. They’re tight as hell, driven by bass and led by a whirling dervish of a front man, it is impossible not to dance in the face of this onslaught. Each band member refuses to stick to one instrument, seemingly picking up anything to hand and playing.
Third song in is new single ‘Pardon my Freedom’ and live it’s even more impressive than on vinyl all crashing rhythms, hypnotic guitars and tourettes syndrome vocals. Music like this needs to be played loud and loud is what we get. The drums thump in your chest and the guitars buzz around your ears. Offer is up on the speakers leading the dance one minute, next he’s picked up a guitar and the band effortlessly slides into a heavier rock sound without losing the funky rhythms.
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Highlight of the set, not unsurprisingly is last years single ‘Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)’. Every song they play clocks in at over 5 minutes but in the 9 minutes of ‘Me and Giuliani……’ !!! really soar. From the drums and bass introduction through the unhinged post punk guitar that whirrs and buzzes and finally into the choppy rhythms of the final section the crowd loosen up and quite frankly it let’s off big time. Arms are in the air, people are dancing like monkeys on hot tin roof and for that brief moment it’s like 1990 all over again.
They play two more songs and from the evidence produced tonight the forthcoming album is going to be a corker. With the temperature raised !!! are on the home straight and pull all the stops out in a breathless finale with the drummer at one point playing the drums and the saxophone simultaneously. They leave after just over an hour with the crowd baying for more but there are no encores tonight. Very punk rock.
These are exciting times. The trail that has been blasted by the Rapture will hopefully lead to success for bands such as !!! and LCD Soundsystem (not forgetting the return of Radio 4 later this year). This is the true fusion of punk and funk, dance and indie (whatever tag you wish to hang on it). !!! deserve to be heard by a much wider audience as this is glorious, life affirming music.
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