!!! / Oxes - London Astoria - 13/10/04
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
What a fine choice of support Oxes are - a band who sound nothing at all like the headliner. Honestly, a precursory set of thick grooves such as those thwacked out by !!! would be a little too much, such is their dense, foreboding (but nonetheless party-centric) sound, and it's this that leads to second on the bill Spectrum's lapsed wailing funk falling on deaf ears - we know there's similar, but more importantly better, to come. Oxes however, are contrastingly brash, bright, and quite literally in your face.
That's because both guitarists make use of having radio transmitters, no leads and an oddly half-empty Astoria (to be fair, it is only about 8pm) to spend most of the night forgetting there's a stage to play on and instead run around the floor, climb on the bar and fall over a lot, all whilst eking out intricate, Shellac-esque bastardised rock riffs and standing on the toes of those watching.
They're awash with contradiction - between song, full of humility and humbleness for the crowd turning up so early and playing along with their little game; mid-song, however, they come across like the most arrogant, self-important band imaginable. The three boys can play, and they know it. Something doesn't quite fit, though, until they invite anyone and everyone who can hit, bang or shake something on to the stage for a brilliant, penultimate 'Half Half & Half', and the audience gets to join in with the feeling at least that they're in the cleverest band on earth. Confrontationally impressive.
!!! walk a strange line between being a high-brow, impenetrable, queasy listening Warp Records act and a current 'NME' darling, rock cliché-boasting, good-time party band. For a first introduction, it's nowhere near as punishing, not nearly as far out as you'd expect from the atmosphere given off by their mysterious demeanour (those three exclamation marks, standing for any three repetitive sounds, what is that all about?), and quite possibly the most pop thing ever to come off the Warp label, more noted for its avant garde electronic noise than its drawn-out, heady grooves. But hey, even the intellectuals need to dance some time. Tonight's the night.
The dancing starts early. A few bars into an opening 'Feel Good Hit Of The Fall' (the first in a continuing trend of cheekily adapted titles), part-time frontman and percussionist Nic Offer is throwing shapes so hard his 'pants' (they are American, after all) split. It's almost as if his energy has raised the bar, and those down the front now have some new level of craziness to adhere to - dance until your clothes break. They do their best, aided by a pretty perfect soundtrack.
It's all underpinned by the simplest, and it has to be said at times it feels like the longest, collection of no-messing beats you could imagine, elaborated upon by various percussive devices that seem to just be haphazardly lying around the stage, just waiting to be picked up and used to contribute to the deep, slightly perverse but utterly captivating groove they relentlessly furrow. Offer gets a rest from frontman duty when John Pugh comes from behind the drumkit to take over with much more of a sleazy, Prince-like flamboyance - he's the 'ooh baby' to Nic Offer's 'bitch', a style that works wonders on the tip toe, whisper utilising punk-funk of 'Shit Scheisse Merde'.
Not as challenging as perhaps expected but all the more intriguing for their still innovative love of a good time and ass-shaking, !!! (Chk Chk Chk is the most common way of pronouncing it, in case you hadn't heard) hit their stride in the final third of the set, especially an utterly fantastic 'Me & Guilliani Down By The Schoolyard' being a brilliant middle finger to the anti-dancing laws enforced by the New York mayor in question. They might be highly restricted by decree as to how much of the Big Apple they get on the floor, but we posit that such petty legislation would have worried them little. Tonight, in the presence of !!!, it would have taken a lot more to stop London dancing.
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