Gang Gang Dance – St. Dymphna

Gang Gang Dance
St. Dymphna
Warp Records

On this their fourth album (and first on Warp) NYC’s third finest experimental group Gang Gang Dance refine their phantasmagorial charm beyond that of their patchy back catalogue. Like Black Dice, GGD have sometimes existed more comfortably as an idea, or flattered to deceive. St. Dymphna stands out as their first concise and representative statement.
The album opens with an orgiastic double header in “Bebey” and “First Communion”, segued gloriously together with a decimated synth attack and highlighting one of GGD’s two areas of expertise: multi-instrumental frantic rhythm-smithery.

The quartet’s second trump card is its textural adroitness, as highlighted by St. Dymphna’s second movement. An intertwined mesh of vocals make up “Blue Nile”’s sonic pallette, with instruments I can’t claim to know the names of adding in brief moments of melody, while “Vacuum’”manages to be both an exercise in easy-listening music and actually memorable – a feat in itself.

Never one to pander to expectations, Dymphna’s next technicolour drop is “Princes”, a bizarro dub-rap turn with some trance-like arpeggios surrounding the familiar delayed vocal stylings of Lizzi Bougatsos. Delayed drum samples, glitchy electronics, computerized brass riffs and a very definite Warp attitude make up the middle section of the album, before finishing off on the slow groove and ethereally Kate Bush-like “House Jam”, and the Outhud-styled guitars and accomplished polyrhythm of “Desert Storm” and “Dust” .
As with their most common (though sonically incompatible) reference points, Black Dice and Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance thrive on indefinability. St. Dymphna, like the releases before it, is a conglomerate of the most diverse styles carried out with the least pretentious of intents. GGD have picked the wisest time to return, too: the wider indie-mainstream market has opened up to their sound, thanks to the diluted Kia Ora versions of the band’s freshly squeezed psychedelia courtesy of chorus-happy MGMT and Yeasayer. Unlike the contrived inclusion of world music influences in these crossover hit-merchants though, Gang Gang Dance’s stylistic experimentation translates more sincerely, making “First Communion” a guilt-free “Sunrise” to drop on the dancefloor. It’s finally time for one of NYC’s finest outfits to become more listened-to than name-dropped.