- Gang Gang Dance have been favourites among art rock circles ever since they first emerged from New York City in 2001. Liberally splashing their experimental sound collages with elements of funk, psychedelia, Asian and Middle Eastern music, they morphed all of these elements into a particularly progressive brand of electronic pop/rock, most vividly illustrated on their most successful (to date) album Eye Contact, from 2011.
Following this very well-received record, the band went silent, until now, with the release of new full-lengther Kazuashita (apparently named after a friend’s baby). As with its predecessor, this album is produced to within an inch of its life but is rescued from being overloaded with ideas by the sheer crystal clarity of the mix. While spoken word samples duel with electronic squiggles, crisp live drums and basses set to “dub”, the emotional centre remains vocalist Lizzi Bougatsos, who finds some common ground with indie mavericks such as Grimes on this new collection of songs.
The first taster we got for the album was the track Lotus, which is certainly the most immediately accessible song here with its dreamy, R&B flavour and hypnotic synth hook. Similarly approachable is the latest single Young Boy (Marika in Amerika) buoyed by a particularly hummable melody.
Fortunately, even the more out-there parts of the record meander along their esoteric paths without leaving the listener behind. There are three pieces of brief, interlude-style music and even those don’t feel like filler, instead adding to the atmosphere and blending effortlessly into the more significant tracks that surround them. The same applies to the other end of the spectrum, with the eight-minute title track and the six-minute J-TREE maintaining attention with their evolutions into high-resolution futuristic prog-funk.
For all their avant-garde leanings, the band can even pull at the heartstrings with the compassionate closing ballad Salve On The Sorrow, which pretty much does what the title says with its tender-hearted delivery and soothing smoothness.
As well as being the product of an imaginative group of musicians, this album is also very much a product of New York City, with its cosmopolitan flavour, art galleries, performance art spaces and general envelope-pushing. Fortunately, Gang Gang Dance play with this myriad of influences in a manner that can be cheerfully absorbed by Brisbane Bazzas such as myself.
- Matt Thrower.