Gang Gang Dance – God’s Money
…then there are some bands that willfully defy catagorization, yet simultaneously tempting you to try to label them, only to fail miserably. Many of these bands also tend to through musicality out of the window, either for the sake of experimentalism, dischordance, or the presentation of severe auditory trauma. Gang Gang Dance is none of these things; instead, it takes musical conventions, but instead of adopting them, it instead dances around them. What exactly do I mean by this? Read further and discover…
Gang Gang Dance, a recently (within the last few years) formed band, which, within the context of their second album, mixes at least a dozen musical genres in a blender and creates an end-result that is quite unique (while somehow retaining distinct characteristics of the genres the music is portraying). Upbeat drums play an integral part to the album, providing the “tribal” backbone to the expansive and beautifully expressive songs. Yet there is also a gentle hailstorm of electronics floating around the mixes, often providing backdrops to the song but then interacting with the percussion in equal measure. Piano, guitar, chimes, xylaphone, marimba, and various keyboards/synthesizers also make their presence known. Finally, the vocals provided by Liz Bougatsos are as equally expressive as the various insturments are, and perhaps even more passionate. Though it is sometimes hard to understand what exactly she is saying (when she is even singing words), her delivery paints a very vivid (and abstract) mental picture of the possible visual representations of the songs. Assertive yet gentle, basic yet complicated, open yet cryptic and esoteric are just a few of the paradoxes encountered when trying to describe Bougatsos’ sound.
I was going to write a song-by-song description, but with five Google server errors occuring at 4:00 AM in the morning, I finally got tired of writing and re-writing the same thing over and over again. So, long story short, “God’s Money” is all good, especially the songs “Before My Voice Fails” and “Egowar”. So go check them out; they are much better than the silly “neo-primitivist” or “avant-garde post-rock” labels would imply.
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John Lithium 