!!! (Chk Chk Chk) - Must Be The Moon

2007

!!! (Chk Chk Chk) - Must Be The Moon (2007) Director: Ben Dickinson Era: Post-Punk Dance Revival / Mid-Aughts Indie (2007) - Peak of the dance-punk movement; DFA Records-adjacent scene; Warp Records European crossover moment; NYC underground club culture at its most critically celebrated High. This video is a well-documented primary source for the visual and subcultural language of mid-2000s dance-punk, directed by a filmmaker who went on to a significant independent film career. Its confirmation across multiple sources (Wikipedia, Warp Records, BrooklynVegan) gives it strong archival integrity. The quantitative data, extreme editing pace, low brightness, high saturation, provides measurable aesthetic parameters for comparative genre study. Tier elevated by its association with a Warp Records release, a confirmed director with traceable career trajectory, and documented extended cultural circulation. Context: Released in May 2007 as the second single from!!! 's third album Myth Takes (Warp Records), 'Must Be The Moon' arrived at the commercial and critical peak of the mid-2000s dance-punk revival. The band occupied a unique position between the DFA Records New York underground and the Warp Records European electronic canon, making them both critically credible and festival-circuit staples. The video's dark, sepia-inflected nightlife aesthetic mirrors the era's wider visual language, intimate, unglamorous, privileging authenticity over production value, consistent with the Williamsburg/Lower East Side art-party culture that!!!'s music soundtracked. The song subsequently gained extended cultural reach, appearing in a 2010 Cartoon Network bumper and a trailer for Rick and Morty Season 8. Director notes: Confirmed by Wikipedia's Myth Takes article and BrooklynVegan (brooklynvegan.com/video-chk-chk-c/) and Pinterest archival caption (pinterest.com), all of which credit 'Ben Dickenson' or 'Ben Dickinson' as director. The single was released May 14, 2007 on Warp Records (catalogue WAP222D), with June 5, 2007 as the North American vinyl release date. The video's dark, warm-toned, rapid-cut nightlife aesthetic is consistent with Dickinson's early music video style rooted in the NYC indie dance underground of the mid-2000s, the same milieu as his contemporaneous work for DFA-adjacent artists.