Send "Gang Gang Dance " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Tinymixtapes |
 On their RAWWAR EP, Gang Gang Dance assimilated their vaguely neo-tribal, electronics-warped sounds into a rhythmic context fit for the club scene. This approach was read by some as an attempt to cash-in on the cultural cache earned from the critical reception of God’s Money, their significantly more abstracted breakthrough. The RAWWAR EP was only intermittently successful, but its opening track “Nicoman,” with its stark beats, slick strings, and nearly-rapped vocals, was deeply satisfying, placing complicated rhythms and unusual scales onto a track with the urgency of an M.I.A. cut.On Saint Dymphna, those club leanings are more fully expanded and developed, filtering the band’s search for esoteric sounds through a slick, beat-heavy framework. The album simultaneously suggests Crystal Castles, My Bloody Valentine, and Black Dice, while being draped in Timbaland-worthy levels of production — it even features grime rapper MC Tinchy Stryder on "Princes." But even when Stryder’s introducing himself with the wonderfully blunt “Oh shit, Gang Gang,” it doesn’t sound incongruous. It’s not that his presence isn’t initially jarring – it’s that the moment of surprise is executed with such conviction that, despite the construction daring you to consider him merely a gimmick, it sounds right at home....full text |
| Pitchforkmedia |
| Gang Gang Dance's third album, God's Money, remains a revelation three years after its release. Pouring the muffled art-beats of 2004's Revival of the Shittest and the extended space-jams of 2004's Gang Gang Dance into structured songs, the record was starry and dreamy, yet also taut and focused. It made evident what was implicit from the start-- that these four hyperactive talents with underground pedigrees (see the Cranium, SSAB Songs, Angelblood, et. al.) could funnel their ideas into melodic pop without diluting them. It also suggested that Gang Gang Dance might become an all-out pop band. But three EPs since God's Money have defied such expectations. Though gems like "Nicoman" did surface, Hillulah, Retina Riddim, and RAWWAR were mostly mysterious experiments akin to the band's earlier releases. Not that any of them were anything less than good-- but none were the pop epiphany the band on God's Money seemed poised for. It turns out they had been working on that all along, and with Saint Dymphna their patience pays off. So clear and shiny it makes God's Money seem murky by comparison, this is predominantly a relative dance-pop album. But it still sounds completely like Gang Gang Dance, preserving their core of new-wave synths, tribal beats, otherworldly singing, and Residents-style loops. The biggest difference this time around is a lack of cavernous atmospheres. Here every sound and beat is laid bare, with no heavy reverb blanketing the songs like fog. The newfound clarity produces neither thinness nor tedium, but simply a direct, unadulterated power....full text |
| Allmusic |
| 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....full text |
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