Warp Records mainstay !!! share their third single “Panama Canal” off their forthcoming ninth studio album Let It Be Blue out May 6, 2022

Today, Warp Records mainstay !!! share their third single “Panama Canal” off their forthcoming ninth studio album Let It Be Blue out May 6, 2022 alongside a new run of UK Fall dates. Like their 2021 R.E.M cover of “Man On The Moon,” that Michael Stipe shouted out saying "This is just awesome!!! i love the take on the song, it's fun and funny and what a sweet groove! thank you all around to @chkchkchk for throwing a little dance into my evening!!!" (see here), “Panama Canal’s” video is also shot in Times Square and other NYC locations. “Panama Canal” follows “Here’s What I Need To Know” that Stereogum calls “a grooving dance number” and “Storm Around The World” that was included in Under The Radar and BrooklynVegan’s “favorite songs of the week.”

!!! on “Panama Canal” - We wanted "Panama Canal" to be one of those songs that would send you right back to the dance floor if you heard it while taking a break from dancing and getting a drink at the bar. We're a dance band and feel like this song fits into that mission but in a way that’s new and slightly different for us. In many ways this encapsulated what we wanted to do with the whole “Let it be blue” album’s production. We wanted modern, minimal songs that mainly featured beats, sub bass and some vocal hooks. The lyrics were inspired by Prince songs like “Housequake” or “DMSR” where he’s heard giving the audience instructions as well as the great rap metaphor writers like Andre 3000 and Lil Wayne. It’s one we definitely hope to hear out of car windows in New York City this summer.

!!! will be on tour this year, including shows at Just Like Heaven Festival In Pasadena, CA, Corona Capitol Fest in Guadalajara, MX, Benidorm Festival in Spain, Local Green Festival in Tokyo and Music Hall Of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY. https://chkchkchk.net/tickets/

There’s this thing about making art where in order to make it feel exciting for yourself, you have to reinvent yourself each time. You have to keep pushing. Go at it like a beginner. Take a white wall and color it in. Every new thing you make has to feel like a statement, the best new version of yourself. Dance punk royals !!! know the feeling well—they’ve been releasing urgent, obliterative, fuck-you music for 25 years. Music, for !!!, has to be a place where anything can happen. To quote frontman Nic Offer “We’ve always been pushing towards something stranger and weirder. We had to keep pushing on.”

The band’s ninth record, Let it Be Blue, takes that feeling of constant, radical transformation to new, untapped zones. It’s a record of sparse dance music. The kind of stuff you want to put on loud, let loose, go to the bar to get a drink only to abandon your plans because the song that just came on was too good not to dance to.

Let it Be Blue is a computer record, but it doesn’t feel like it. Featuring production from Patrick Ford, Let it Be Blue is the product of file sharing, trading stems, song particles, little ideas on their way to being fully realized dance tracks. It was conceived during the past two years, with dreams of future dancefloors very much on the brain. The resulting 11 songs are some of the band’s most production focused offerings to date. They’re crystalline, full of sub-bass and drums. It evokes visions of clubs where a concoction of Dembow and acid house play at volumes so loud your ears hurt and you forget what day of the week it is. In other words, it’s a !!! album. It makes you freak out a little bit.

Making something sparse was an exciting challenge for the band. “Starting as a band with seven or eight people, we were always crowding everything in and trying to fit as many parts as possible,” says Offer. Let it Be Blue is a departure from that.It’s minimalist, but that doesn’t at all mean that these songs aren’t complicated, self-contained worlds. They are.

The record’s cast of collaborators are another !!! signature, another way for the band to feel constantly excited about the discovery process that is making new work. This shift has been in the works for a decade. It started on Thr!!!ler, a record that you might consider a turning point in the band’s expansive discography. In the past decade, the band has collaborated with an exciting rotation of artists. On this record, that desire to experiment alongside other artists feels especially realized. “Those characters stand out more,” says Offer. They feel especially distinct. When Angelica Garcia hops on vocals on “Un Puente,” the scenery changes again. We’re not in the New York City lofts of yore, we’re on a goddamn beach, pupils dilated, bouncing from high BPM.

Let it Be Blue is a record about discovery, uncovering new parts of yourself, going there. How many dance records start off with an acoustic track? Let it Be Blue does, it’s called “Normal People,” and it’s a Laurel Canyon-esque amuse bouche. It’s tongue in cheek, it’s like walking taking a first step in a new place before everything changes in weird and excellent ways. It’s kind of like a Pandora's Box. Open it up, the whole world shifts and transforms around you. Mostly though, it will make you really want to get down and dance.