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.
[April 2009] Gang Gang Dance have seen some shit. Since they began playing together in New York at the beginning of the decade, the city has undergone tremendous changes, physically as well as culturally. Then there are the more personal turbulences, ranging from the death of original member Nathan Livingston Maddox in 2002 to a freak fire that destroyed most of their equipment this past Februa...
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It's with a fondness we take a bow and draw the curtain on a year in music and start wrapping up the year in albums or we really could be here until next December and miss all of next year's. We really couldn't leave without a quick look through the rest of some exceptional records that arrived in 2008. GANG GANG DANCE - SAINT DYMPHNA The kind of album that could evolve an entire film from i...
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If you have any interest in hearing what the future of music might sound like, go buy the new Gang Gang Dance record Saint Dymphna . This recording is the bands follow up to 2005's God's Money and is their most accessible recording to date. Chock-full of mind bending rock, trance, grime, and Bollywood flare -- it's difficult to ask for much more of this one of a kind, absolutely unique ...
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We interrupt our usually scheduled broadcast of focused and directional reviews and features to bring you this special, slightly tangential, report. Gang Gang Dance's album came out yesterday and among their usual crazy tripped out Bjork meets a bunch of insane New Yorkers in a drum circle is a song that is seriously amazing. Princes [...]
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Long-time darlings of New York's underground music scene, Gang Gang Dance look braced to make a wider breakthrough with their new album - a heady mish-mash of post-rock and electro, punk and dance. James Dalrymple is thrilled and a little bit scared by the results.
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So here's the drill. Gang Gang Dance's Saint Dymphna is out on October 21st on Social Registry. I have an advance copy and am going to sit down, listen, and blog my review/experience live, and hopefully, won't have the egregious grammatical errors that plagued the Deerhunter real time review. As far as the music that [...]
More >
So here's the drill. Gang Gang Dance's Saint Dymphna is out on October 21st on Social Registry. I have an advance copy and am going to sit down, listen, and blog my review/experience live, and hopefully, won't have the egregious grammatical errors that plagued the Deerhunter real time review. As far as the music that [...]
More >
[April 2009] Gang Gang Dance have seen some shit. Since they began playing together in New York at the beginning of the decade, the city has undergone tremendous changes, physically as well as culturally. Then there are the more personal turbulences, ranging from the death of original member Nathan Livingston Maddox in 2002 to a freak fire that destroyed most of their equipment this past Februa...
More >
It's with a fondness we take a bow and draw the curtain on a year in music and start wrapping up the year in albums or we really could be here until next December and miss all of next year's. We really couldn't leave without a quick look through the rest of some exceptional records that arrived in 2008. GANG GANG DANCE - SAINT DYMPHNA The kind of album that could evolve an entire film from i...
More >
If you have any interest in hearing what the future of music might sound like, go buy the new Gang Gang Dance record Saint Dymphna . This recording is the bands follow up to 2005's God's Money and is their most accessible recording to date. Chock-full of mind bending rock, trance, grime, and Bollywood flare -- it's difficult to ask for much more of this one of a kind, absolutely unique ...
More >
Long-time darlings of New York's underground music scene, Gang Gang Dance look braced to make a wider breakthrough with their new album - a heady mish-mash of post-rock and electro, punk and dance. James Dalrymple is thrilled and a little bit scared by the results.
More >
Today is a day that will go down in history. It is a huge election that will impact our nation greatly. It is a big decision, and every one of your votes matters! So make sure that you leave room to vote, it is really important that each and everyone of us puts our mark down in history. Whether it is for Obama or Mccain, make sure you go out and make an impact!! Here are some tunes that hav...
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We interrupt our usually scheduled broadcast of focused and directional reviews and features to bring you this special, slightly tangential, report. Gang Gang Dance's album came out yesterday and among their usual crazy tripped out Bjork meets a bunch of insane New Yorkers in a drum circle is a song that is seriously amazing. Princes [...]
More >
Brooklyn based Gang Gang Dance have announced some new European tour dates. It is set to begin in February before their single 'First Communion' is released in March. The tour will be supporting their fourth album "Saint Dymphna". The tour dates are below. Gang Gang Dance European Tour Dates : 02/13 Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Paradiso 02/14 Brussels, Belgium - AB Club 02/15 Hamburg, Germa...
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Bebey |
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| 2 First Communion |
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| 3 Blue Nile |
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| 4 Vacuum |
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| 5 Princes |
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| 6 Inners Pace |
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| 7 Afoot |
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| 8 House Jam |
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| 9 Interlude (No Known Home) |
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| 10 Desert Storm |
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| 11 Dust |
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Click to purchase…
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 "Saint Dymphna")
