Following the release of their seventh studio release, Shake the Shudder, and in the midst of their European tour, we caught a hold of Nic Offer, frontman of !!! (pronounced ‘chk chk chk’ for those of you not in the know), for a chat.

How’s the tour going?
Good, we’re just starting to get into it. Getting onto the other side of jet lag.

Do you ever have an interview where you aren’t asked about your name?
We do have those. It’ll usually come up when it’s the first time talking to someone. We wanted something that would set us apart from other bands.

What is the best gig that you guys have ever played?
You know, that’s impossible to answer. There’s been so many over the years. We try to treat everyone like it’s that special one. Some of those nights where you’re playing to like eight people, that can still be that special gig. So you just don’t try to put a hierarchy on it, you try to make every one as great as the last one.

We’re based in Dublin, and disappointed you won’t be visiting us. Have you played in Dublin before, and any reason you’re not playing on this tour?
We have, several times actually. It’s just one of those things, you have to be a big enough band to make it over. We’re hoping to come over to the UK again this autumn. (Though Dublin’s not part of the UK I guess.) It’s not because we don’t want to, there just wasn’t an opportunity to make it feasible.

What are your favourite cities to play?
We always really like playing in Spain. They really go for it, and it makes for a really fun show. But there are a lot of other fun places.

Moving on to the new album – there’s a really stronger disco element (arguably stronger than in your previous albums). Would you say there’s any particular reason for this, anything you were listening to or thinking about?
It’s something that we were always drawn to. It was a basis when we started and a basis of dance music in general. For this record we were listening to a lot of old house music, and so much of that stuff samples old disco. We’re kind of a disco band, we just had that idea of sampling ourself, and making it like a house record. It’s just something that’s always been there, like the blues. John Lennon said that blues is the chair of rock and roll, disco is definitely one of our chairs.

You have a lot of additional featured singers as well as an ensemble that is already pretty large. Do you like working with so many people?
It’s just more fun and keeps the sound fresh. It allows you to tell a different kind of story, with all of the different voices. It was during the era of the 90s, and the change to CD length made everyone think, “Hey, we can do a 70-minute length album”, and for me after like 60 minutes I was tired of the one person’s voice, and although we never do albums that are that long, we’ve always been conscious of everyone getting tired of my voice.

The videos you guys have released are really strong – do you think music videos are getting more important, are you going to focus on them a bit more as you go on?
I think that videos aren’t important, but that you can use them importantly, and make a good one where possible. I think it’s kind of a funny medium, because it’s usually an art form made by two reluctant artists: the musicians would rather be making a song, and the director would rather be making a movie, and they both have to join together to make this. That said, I do think there are about 5% of videos that are interesting, and there have been some great ones in history, but they tend to be atypical. Whenever we do one, we want it to be worthwhile, we don’t want it to be garbage, so we do our best.

As you may or may not have noticed, the political situation globally right now is a little bit crazy. Where do you think dance music fits into this? I’m thinking especially of Amanda Palmer saying last winter that Trump is going to make punk rock great again.
Well, I think it may be too early to say. That was said, and everyone said, “Well, where is it?” and you know it just started to get crazy like five or six months ago. I think before, Americans never treated Trump as anything much more than a joke before then. I think the art movement is going to have to start to happen, like in punk, those bands are going to have to start up.

But I don’t think we should be so discouraged if that doesn’t happen, there are different things that people can do these days. I think memes, and social media may be more effective than songs can be. In the Sixties a song was a new — well, maybe not a new — but a trendy, viable way of energising people. Now maybe political songs only reach the people who already think that way, and there are other creative forms of political protest. I just mean I don’t think people should be disappointed if it doesn’t happen, because there are other exciting things that could happen.

And, on a closing note, and with that in mind, what album would you bring to a panic room in the case of WWIII?
You’d bring the longest album you could bring. So, I’d say [The Beatles’] The White Album.  ■

!!!’s album Shake the Shudder is out now via Warped Records.  Listen to it here: http://smarturl.it/shake-stream or join !!! on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/chkchkchk/.