Gang Gang Dance

Gang Gang Dance (Fusetron)

By Amber Drea
Published: March 10th, 2005 | 11:58am

Sharing characteristics with that of contemporaries Animal Collective and Black Dice, the music of Gang Gang Dance contrasts the crude with the modern, like a drum circle with electronics. Though the lyrics and song outlines included in the cover art prove otherwise, the Brooklyn-based band’s self-titled full-length debut sounds entirely improvised. And now the turntable-challenged can experience the wonders of this previously vinyl-only release, which contains two roughly 20-minute-long tracks.

Opening with a series of piercing squawks emitted from the tightened throat of vocalist Lizzi Bougatsos, "Slaven Bladechild" progresses with layers of delay-ridden grunts, haunting wails, and other indecipherable utterances. Spiked with pulsing keyboards, random guitar noodling, sporadic snare, and crashing cymbals, the song doesn’t settle into a groove until about six minutes in. Ethiopian melodies emerge along with a metered beat, only to devolve again into cascading bells.

The second composition begins much more traditionally, with a steady beat and intelligible singing, but soon disintegrates among mechanical repetition and heavy breathing. "The Thread" consists of harsher instrumentation, loaded with distortion and dissonance, swelling synths, and eerie guitars. Ascending and descending Ethiopian scales return, followed by the intermingling of Bougatsos’ high-pitched warble and the masculine interjections of the late Nathan Maddox (who died in 2002). Polyrhythmic layers of static-laden guitar, percussion, and vocalizations erupt in an explosion of feedback, which ends so abruptly that it leaves one’s ears ringing.

These five musicians seem possessed by a spirit neither good nor evil, but all encompassing. They dwell in the space between the past and the present, wakefulness and sleep. Such is the duality of Gang Gang Dance.