!!!: As If (Warp Records)
Formed in Sacramento 20 years ago from various bands on California's punk and hardcore scene, this sixth album from the electro-punk-funk sextet – their name is often rendered as Chik Chik Chik - is their fourth on Sheffield's esteemed Warp label, which is all you should need by way of a vote of confidence. As with its 2013 predecessor Thr!!!er, As If is playful, funky, loud, cheeky and as hard to categorize as the band's name is to pronounce. If comparisons are required, opening track All U Writers is like the bastard offspring of ESG and 1980s Italo disco star Pino D'Angio, Funk (I Got This) strays into Daft Punk/Nile Rodgers territory while Ooo is Scritti Politti remixed by LCD Soundsystem. But !!! talk to the heart as well as the feet. “Sometimes it takes the late afternoon sun to make water shimmer like glass,” frontman Nic Offer sings on Lucy Mongoosey while Ooo recounts a sweetly romantic long distance phone call and the small details that make it significant: “It was raining in New York, did I forget to say?”. Another winning collection from one of American music's best-kept secrets.
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