Gang Gang Dance: Down With The Crazies
By Team JamBase Nov 18, 2008 • 2:30 pm PST
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On one end of the spectrum, Gang Gang Dance try their hand at U.K.-style grime hip-hop in “Princes,” and on another, bliss out into a Kate Bush-style single in “House Jam.” Yet, while the recording sessions going into Saint Dymphna may have resulted in some of the band’s most dazzling work to date, the process in getting there was taxing on the band’s members. According to Degraw, the group spent nearly three years working on the album, and encountered numerous obstacles along the way.
“The whole time was between two and a half to three years,” Degraw says. “We weren’t working on it the whole time. We spent a month and a half, plus three weeks at the end. This was a difficult record to finish. There were some band disagreements. We ran out of money. Equipment broke. We’d have a week in the studio, and when it was going well, we’d have to pack it up. We’d go on tour and come home and work in our jobs. We had a lot of difficulty deciding when something was okay.”
“There’s a lot of nice things that didn’t make it on the record,” Degraw continues. “There’s a lot of half-finished things, but eventually we just said, ‘Fuck it, we need to finish it.’ After this difficult experience, the last push to finish the record was nice. It was really fun. It took a good experience to make it all work. I’m proud of it. I just wish it hadn’t taken so long.”
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“[The recording process] was such a maddening experience,” Degraw says, “and Saint Dymphna, being the patron saint of madness, confusion, epilepsy and sleepwalking seemed to fit what we had gone through. But, Saint Dymphna is a protector. We do our own thing and there’s something comforting about her being down with the crazy people. The world seems particularly crazy right now.”
Gang Gang Dance is a very peculiar band. In some ways, their effects laden neo-psychedelia sounds far removed from any kind of live sensibility, though in spots, they sound raw, impassioned and undeniably tight. More so than on any other album, Saint Dymphna shows Gang Gang Dance beginning to fully embrace the ‘Dance’ part of their name, though replete with all the bells, whistles and inexplicable, unique sounds that the band stirs up. Yet, according to Degraw, it’s a sound that not only translates live but was written with the express intent of being performed in a live setting.
“First and foremost, we’re a live band,” Degraw says. “A lot of what we write is for live shows. In a lot of things, there are shifts in mood. Some things we can’t do live, technically. In some sense, songs are dictated by what we’re able to do. We cut things up and chop things up, but the beginnings of songs, the genesis, is based in live music.”
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“We’ve made films on tour,” Degraw says. “We have a sensibility that is multimedia based. It’s nice to not be strictly a rock band. It’s nice to do different kinds of events. More stuff like that could happen in the future. I mean, we could write a play or something. We don’t over think things. If someone has an idea to do something, then we’ll do it. We could do all different kinds of things. I don’t think it’s strictly a musical project.”
After enduring the trials and tribulations associated with Saint Dymphna, Gang Gang Dance has come out of it with a positive outlook. Throughout their frustrations, the band has taken to heart that their music is best when it isn’t forced, and when the band works as a unit.
“We try to be natural about what we’re doing at the time,” Degraw says. “We’re going to try and record as much as we can. When we work with each other, that’s where we’re the strongest.”
Gang Gang Dance is on tour now, dates available here.
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