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!!!'s Nic Offer Breaks Down His Band's Dance-Heavy New Album, Track by Track

The NYC outfits's new LP for Warp is aimed at the club room floor, and draws inspiration from everyone from Nina Kraviz to Jam City.

The music of !!!—which everyone seems to pronounce as "chk chk chk," though it's supposed to be any combination of three monosyllabic words—sounds a little bit like everything. Emerging during the DFA-led dance-punk craze of the early 2000s and led by former The Yah Mos hardcore vocalist Nic Offer, the band combined their signature disco flourishes, crunchy guitar riffs, and camp vocal stylings with a wide array of outside influences, from George Michael to Lil' Louis.

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Though !!! has chosen to dial up and down its influence at various points in their discography, the group has always remained true to its roots in club music—an affinity that surfaces frequently (and often cleverly), across DJ sets, studio mixes, album remixers like Maurice Fulton, and track titles like "Take Ecstasy With Me." And on their latest album for Warp Records, As If, that love for the dancefloor is as apparent as ever, as is the group's knack for pulling in variety of disparate samples and sounds. The band's follow up to 2013's THR!!!LER, the 51-minute album kicks off with the dancefloor stomper "All You Writers," before settling into the fluttering groove "Sick Ass Moon," which sounds straight out of a Benoit & Sergio EP.

Following the album's release last Friday, we caught up with Offer to get the story behind each of its 11 tracks, as well as the one classic dance tune (with a few outliers) he believes to have influenced each entry. He also made us a playlist of those favorites, along with some extra tracks they just love.

1. "All U Writers"

Nic Offer: [All U Writers] is an odd one, because both I and Rafael [Cohen] had written something completely different from each other. Even though this song has Beatles and Van Halen jokes, the only song we referenced was Nina Kraviz' "Ghetto Kraviz." She had this three-minute single edit of it, and it just kind of banged from beginning to end. We thought, "Well, what if we just make a second single and not like a fucking 10-minute track like the other songs?" "Why don't we just make a three-minute banger?" We got it to like five minutes, so we kind of failed.

Nina Kraviz - Ghetto Kraviz

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2. "Sick Ass Moon"

Rafael had been listening to a Blawan track that sampled Aliyah or something like that, and Googled "R&B acapella"… and the first thing that came up was an Erykah Badu track. So he starts fucking with this lyric saying "all night"—which is what like every dance song begins with. He looped that up, pitched it down, threw some chords on it, and gave it to me. It was one of those classic things where he plays me his stuff, I play him my stuff, he hops on my laptop—I hop on his. He played me a bunch of things and I thought, "That's cool, that's cool…" Then, when he played me this one, I was like, "Yeah man, that's the one!" I walked outside to write some lyrics and looked at the moon, and that was it. It's kinda like that Tom Waits quote: "If you want to write a song, just look at the weather."

Blawan - Getting Me Down

3. "Every Little Bit Counts"

Rafael was inspired by Wham! on this one. In the 80s, everyone's kind of nodding back to Motown and it became boring after a while, but no one does Motown these days, so we thought we'd try that. I love "Every Little Bit Hurt," but I'd recommend Stevie Wonder's "For Once in My Life" for anyone who wants a good, solid 60s Motown record.

I sometimes look up choruses on the internet and sing along with them, to study other people's songwriting tricks. I'd done a night where I played and sang the first two records of REM. It's a way to appreciate records you're tired of. When you're playing along with them, you're able to learn their little tricks.

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Wham! - Freedom

4. "Freedom! '15"

That one is a nod to George Michael and his song "Freedom 90." It's just a basic jam loop and I wrote some chords over it. To make a punk records after 20 years is kind of ridiculous and not an emotion that we relate to, but what we do relate to is that raw feel. We like those old house records that feel fresh and young. It's just like taking a little disco loop and throwing in a kick drum, and it sounds awesome. We're this pretty good little disco band, so we thought "let's just sample ourselves, throw in a kick drum and we'll have a fucking house record. "That's what we did with the verses on [Freedom! '15], but then it just unfolded to the band playing full on. We also wanted to get a female perspective so we had some gospel singers come in and sing on it it, and they knocked it apart and it was a really fun part of making the record.

George Michael - Freedom 90

5. "Ooo"

For this record we wrote 40 songs, recorded 20 of them, and had our friends vote and narrow the album down to 11 songs. It's better to have a friend tell you than a critic. We took the chorus from another song and threw it in there, scavenging a bit. We kind of Robin Thicke'd Lil Louis' "Clap Your Hands" (Tambourine mix), and threw this house groove underneath it to just make it a bit fresher. I felt like we're always tied to the 80s or something, and there was definitely a conscious effort to make this record not sound like the 80s. We'll naturally sound like that era in some way because we have that post-disco thing, but I think it was still important for us to sound different.

Lil Louis - Clap Your Hands (Tambourine Mix)

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6. "All the Way"

This was a pretty fun one because it was written on the same day we went to one of David Mancuso's Loft parties. We went with Mario [Andreoni], and we really like that vibe from that era—you could just play whatever. The whole Loft and [Paradise] Garage thing became a sound, but at the time they were just playing wild records. We wanted "All the Way" to be one of those weird records like, "What the fuck is this?" Like something we made up from a jam of keyboard stuff that Mario had done. [Dan] Gorman had started singing in the jam, which he normally doesn't do. It was his introduction to lead singing, and it was cool because he likes to make weird sounds, so we managed to get more of the "what the fuck" reaction like, "Wait, who's this guy?"

We chopped [his recording] up and threw it in there. I had a discussion with a friend about how much I loved autotune and how much my audience doesn't. You talk to people in indie rock and they all say autotune is the devil, but I think it's just another instrument you can use, like reverb and delay. I know that autotune will become dated in a few years, but I think eventually it would be looked back at as just another classic effect.

T Pain - I'm Sprung

7. "Til The Money Runs Out"

I liked the end of romance movies where like Thelma and Louise where it's like: "Fuck it, let's drive off the cliff." I liked that desperate romantic attitude and the story of "Til The Money Runs Out," is about figuring out the way we can live that feverish romance forever. It's like any of the times I've been on one of those trips with a girl and you never want it to end.

Thelma & Louisa - Last Scene (SPOILER ALERT!)

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8. "Bam City"

I was listening to the group Jam City when i sat down at the drum machine i was like "I'm going to make a beat!" I just named it "Bam City" to remember what I was trying to do. It didn't actually turn out sounding like Jam City, but when you want to rip something off, you want to get it wrong. That's why we were pretty explicit about naming all our influences on this record. The song happened on top of [its influence] and came out different.

Jam City - How We Relate to the Body

9. "Funk (I Got This)"

Mr. C for years was my favorite DJ, I used to personally set my alarm every morning to listen to his show on Hot97 at noon—it was always an inspiration. When he ended up confessing on air for getting caught with a transgender prostitute, I was just blown away how much of a movie-moment it was, him weeping on air saying these intense, awkward things—but his friends were so strong for him and encouraging to accept himself who he was.

For me, when I'm cutting up loops from the jam session im trying to capture those magic moments. Listening to this song, it was the same thing—people having to be brave, and discover things through a conversation, growing stronger throughout the interview. I kept on finding parts [from the interview] and cutting them up into some of the stronger parts of the album, about recognizing your true self and being proud of it. That's your talent, and you're giving to the world what you should.

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Mr.C - Confession Video

10. "Lucy Mongoosey"

We used the same drum machines as the Prince track, "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker". It's not something i listen to a lot now, but it's completely in our DNA—you're influenced more by that record just by talking about it. We just all threw our own chords in there, and it was done in a night. It was pretty simple, but It felt fun, and different, which is what I really love about it]. Samples are really like a treasure chest, you just pull these neat things out. Being in a band 19 years, we do have our talents, we can do things—it's about stretching all of the different sounds on the album.

Prince - The Ballad of Dorothy Parker

"I Feel Free (Citation Needed)"

Rafael played me the instrumental on an off-day on tour and said he wanted it to be kind of like a "talking house" kind of song. Then we had to decide what I wanted to talk about. Mario threw some cool guitar loops on it and then things started to fall in place. I kinda of narrated— adding in the pitched down 90s vocals and a more traditional show biz attitude—introducing the band, which I had never really done before. It just felt fun and cool. Kind of like Morrissey—heavy stuff tossed off with a nudge and wink—or maybe a Woody Allen movie. To me that's how you're able to say those serious things. Trackwise, I think we pulled a bit from "God Made Me Phunky"

Xpress - God Made Me Phunky Check out the full playlist below:

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