Gang Gang Dance Albums (2)
What The Critics Say
Brooklyn's Gang Gang Dance is an excellent example of the vibrancy found in the loosely knit underground musical community in New York. Traditionally, the trio has relied heavily on electronics and sampling but has used them to very free-form ends. Influences from Brian Eno to Tetsuo Inoue, and Eastern-tinged world music could be heard in their sprawling textures and ambience-laden warp grooves. With Saint Dymphna (titled for the patron saint of outsiders), GGD has a made another left turn but this time by turning right, away form the hippie/patchouli saturated post-psychedelic tribal music and toward the more structured forms of electronic beat music like dubstep and grime. Gone are the long, sprawling ragged jams of their previous albums; they are replaced with 11 "songs," none of them more than five-and-a-half minutes. The beauty in this is immediately apparent: the listener encounters the influence of latter day digital dubbers like Mad Scientist andDub Syndicate in the sprawling sonics on the album opener "Bebey," but that quickly morphs itself into a more rugged, robotic formalism with traces of Kraftwerk, Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft, and even Der Plan. This opens the fader gates for the floppy electro-funk of "First Communion," the first track to feature Liz Bougatsos' vocals. Sharded streams of electric guitar wrap themselves around her voice, also adorned by a deep rumbling bass that's fuzzed to the max, and then the winding, melodic, pulsing, electronic synths and a drum kit. It's the beginning of an exotic journey into sound that gets to the aforementioned dancefloor styles in earnest, such as the slower, four to the floor loops on "Blue Nile," and the truly exotic mélange of samples, sprawling void atmospherics. and stretched beats on "Vacuum." MC Tinchy Stryder is a featured vocalist on "Princes," where grime and dubstep come together in a rhythm collision of startling proportions. There is room for the truly abstract here as well, such as on the ambient soundtrack-like "Inners Pace," and the more elastic rhythmic construction on "Afoot." But by the time the listener gets to "House Jam" -- which is nothing less than an utterly psychedelic blend of acid house and trance with a "straight" sung vocal by Bougatsos -- she'll wonder if she's really hearing GGD at all. "Desert Storm" winds all of these explorations in a tightly constructed mélange of dubstep, electro, breakbeat science, and freaky trip-hop. GGD claim that this record was influenced by the bombast of reggaeton blasting on N.Y. streets. Maybe so, but the brew they've conjured is their own. It's easily their most fully realized project to date and rather than simply a pastiche, they've managed to create something that's completely their own. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'God's Money'
Release Date 4/5/2005
Tracks 9
Label The Social Registry
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Thankfully, the Internet has boundless space, all the better to cope with the twaddle bouncing around the Web about Gang Gang Dance and their latest album. Perhaps people are somewhat baffled that the band is as much a live unit as a studio concern, thus throwing off musical perceptions. Freak-folk, art-noise, tribal dub, you name a whacked-out hybrid description, and it's been applied by someone to this group. Take 'em off-stage, though, and what you really have is an ambient electronic unit that's no more or less experimental than anything coming out on, say, the DiN label. "God's Money I" and "God's Money V," for instance, are both built around tribal drum rhythms, the former with wailing vocals on top, the latter in a more experimental, almost Tetsu Inoue mode. "God's Money IX," in contrast, rolls with thunder and is a much darker piece, while "God's Money VII" is filled with ambient textures. "Before My Voice Fails" reaches ethereal proportions, while both "Untitled (Piano)" and "Egowar" feature gorgeous synth passages. Even the noisy, fractured "Glory in Itself/Egyptian" has a melody lurking within. The most challenging number, however, is "Nomad for Love (Cannibal)," where shards of musical bits and pieces are only loosely woven together. The Gang's rhythms and textures are intriguing, and much more accomplished in sound than their previous lo-fi efforts. What throws the group for a loop however, are Liz Bougatsos' vocals: chanted, singsong babbled, howled, and wailed in turn. Her presence almost solely pulls the Gang out of the ambient world and into another far more disturbing and experimental galaxy entirely. Without her, God's Money would be a haunting journey through an ever-shifting electronic world, where textures and rhythms are explored to oftentimes great effect. With her, the musical experience is far more difficult, as she cuts across the grain of the atmospheres and moods, suggesting the group will never sit comfortably in any niche but its own. ~ Jo-Ann Greene, All Music Guide
