If I remember correctly, I was commuting on the bus when I first listened to St Dymphna, and I started excitedly texting a bunch of friends about how simply awesome Gang Gang Dance are. My initial thought was that it's going to be the one album that’s going to have as much an impact on the contemporary musical landscape as Fear of Music, my favorite Talking Heads album, had on the post-punk scene back in 1979 or something like that (and sorry if the comparisons between the Talking Heads and Gang Gang Dance is more than a bit wonky; other than that both bands seem to be rather influenced by African pop music, though in very different ways, as far as one can discern) once more folks start to figure it out… maybe it isn’t quite supposed to pan out that way, but that does not take anything away from this album’s virtuosity.
29. Gang Gang Dance
St Dymphna [Warp, 2008]
There is this febrile quality to Gang Gang Dance’s music that fuels the sense of eclecticism on St Dymphna, their funkiest and most cohesive effort to date – and not too bad at all for a record titled after the patron saint of madness and confusion. While past, edgier Gang Gang Dance records were realized in much rougher (i.e. less than listenable) form, the mutant dance music of St Dymphna has evolved to make for a more coherent thread to their experimental-noise contemporaries Black Dice and (early) Animal Collective; although the stylistic leap into the exploratory global-sourcing of afrobeat-driven songs like “Bebey” and “Inners Pace” is mostly the band’s own doing, and this relentless cross referencing between disparate musical genres is perhaps the album’s real masterstroke. Indeed, listening to the album without first being acquainted to this band’s sonic sensibility (think along the lines of free-improvisational jams anchored by thickly textured dub grooves and the wickedly restless singing of Liz Bougatsos) is stepping straight into a musically convulsive shitstorm, where their unlatched jigsaw fragments of strange rhythmic overtones and beatific madness manage to gel together so brilliantly.
29. Gang Gang Dance
St Dymphna [Warp, 2008]
There is this febrile quality to Gang Gang Dance’s music that fuels the sense of eclecticism on St Dymphna, their funkiest and most cohesive effort to date – and not too bad at all for a record titled after the patron saint of madness and confusion. While past, edgier Gang Gang Dance records were realized in much rougher (i.e. less than listenable) form, the mutant dance music of St Dymphna has evolved to make for a more coherent thread to their experimental-noise contemporaries Black Dice and (early) Animal Collective; although the stylistic leap into the exploratory global-sourcing of afrobeat-driven songs like “Bebey” and “Inners Pace” is mostly the band’s own doing, and this relentless cross referencing between disparate musical genres is perhaps the album’s real masterstroke. Indeed, listening to the album without first being acquainted to this band’s sonic sensibility (think along the lines of free-improvisational jams anchored by thickly textured dub grooves and the wickedly restless singing of Liz Bougatsos) is stepping straight into a musically convulsive shitstorm, where their unlatched jigsaw fragments of strange rhythmic overtones and beatific madness manage to gel together so brilliantly.
30. The National: Boxer [Beggars Banquet, 2007]
29. Gang Gang Dance: St Dymphna [Warp, 2008]
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