Gang Gang Dance - Rawwar EP (Young Turks)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
Like so many of the American bands of their ilk, Gang Gang Dance are burdened with potential. In this group I would include Black Dice, Battles, Liars and Animal Collective, a disparate array of styles admittedly, but it is more the ethos of these bands that groups them together, a sort of shared approach or style. These are all bands that are clearly concerned with doing something original and as such have made incredible albums - I mean really incredible - so much so that I find this a very hard thing to admit to myself, and indeed you my discerning thoughtful reader, but is it just me, or is there something missing (yes even on the seemingly faultless, incredibly enjoyable albums 'Drums Not Dead' and 'Broken Ear Record', not to mention the absolutely mind blowing new Animal Collective album 'Strawberry Jam'. What I mean is that when Beefheart made 'Trout Mask Replica' for example, he not only created a new sound, but the sound was honed to a tee. It's a difficult comparison to live up to, I know, but the reason I say this is that I feel that we are on the verge of something truly exciting with these bands, and I believe now more than ever Gang Gang Dance have an important role to play in this.
Having seen Gang Gang Dance a couple of years ago and after a dodgy start being totally floored by them, I went and bought 'Gods Money', which I've since read much critical acclaim for. Yet I felt it massively undersold their live performance, and was a bit disappointed with an other wise fantastic album largely because of the muddy recording and slightly more timid nature to it. On the 'Rawwar EP', there are still some of the same problems rearing their heads, which is a crying shame because this can really set a band back years. It is again predominately the recording that I have a problem with, too much mud and too much booming middle-y bass. It's as simple as that.
Yet the intensely exciting thing about Gang Gang Dance is that of all of the really unconventional new bands, this is the band who probably are turning more things on their head and are approaching sounds organised into a duration from more directions. Oh sure, they aren't the electrical whiz kids that Black Dice are, but this is just it, they are not just letting the interesting instruments (such as drum pads into a laptop through delay units yadda yadda yadda) guide them - they are commanding the interesting instruments. It wouldn't be the first time that I have cited Mr. Eno's observation that fresh music consists of people finding new rapports with machines, a criteria that Gang Gang Dance fulfil on more than one account. The problem is that not only is the recording still a bit shaky, but everything is a little all over the place. Perhaps my ears just need to get used to it, or perhaps they just need a bit more time to grow in to it, more likely and more predictably it is probably a combination of these two factors - somewhere along the line, Gang Gang Dance's recorded output and I will meet, and it will be beautiful.
Perhaps a bit of a better yet still unusual comparison of what I want from this band is Wolf Eyes' faultless 'Dead Hills'. On first hearing that not only did I hear music being made in a manner that I was not at all familiar with in any way shape or form, but the sounds and the overall composition are perfect. Of course the thing with Wolf eyes is that they are a niche interest and probably always will be, and I think that the aforementioned list of bands can go far beyond this, Battles being a brilliant case in point - thankfully a vast chunk of the population has heard of Battles and Battles in turn are leading people from a much more pop market to other brilliant things. And it doesn't take many steps from Battles to reach Gang Gang Dance.
The overall sound of Gang Gang Dance is made up of floaty synth melodies over off beat, danceable rhythms with a sort of Indian tabla undercurrent, which I guess on paper sounds terrible, but in actual fact this is very much not the case. They have an amazing ability to pull the rug from under your feet and make the whole song seemingly collapse into a splayed out mess of rhythms, only to pull it back together revealing that you haven't fallen over at all, you've merely leaped into a new plane with it's own new kind of gravity. Just imagine if they had some proper studio time.
In the meantime, there is still a chance to get in their relatively early before they get huge and you can't see past the heads of the people in front of you, because this band certainly have the ability that it takes to be something of a hit phenomenon.
Artists in this article: Gang Gang Dance
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