Lister

By Cathrine Rodalgaard
Translated by Sara Marie Atkinson

The Brooklyn-based quartet Gang Gang Dance is known for pushing the limits of musical conventions. With an undogmatic approach to music and a playful relationship with genre definitions, they have created an anti-authoritative style that does not follow any rules but their own.

“We try to be adventurous as musicians - and we try to be open,” Josh Diamond, the band’s guitarist, says. He, along with singer Liz Bougatsos, Brian DeGraw and Tim DeWit, comprise the core of the band.

“You cannot be adventurous if you have a preconceived idea of what you are trying to make or if you censor yourself and say: “No, that’s not what we’re trying to do”. I don’t think we’re trying to do anything specific, I think we are very open to whatever music we’re channelling at the moment,” Diamond explains. 

That Gang Gang Dance reflect themselves in the moment can also be seen in their music, where they mix current genre inspirations from hiphop, grime and house with tribal drum rythms and electronic beats, as on their latest and fourth album, Saint Dymphna from 2008.

Prefer to play live rather than record

Gang Gang Dance have spent the spring recording new tracks for their next album, and they will continue the work in the autumn, when they return to Brooklyn after the summer’s festival gigs.

Although the work on the album is under way, it is only slowly reaching its final form. In their working process, the experience of how the tracks work when they are performed live, helps to create a picture of the energy they contain, and they must attempt to encapsulate this energy on the album.

“I don’t think it (the upcoming album, ed.) has reached a point yet where it can be described. Just because it has not reached a point yet where it makes sense,” Diamond says.

“But we will be playing some new songs at Roskilde Festival. We always like to play new songs. Because we’re always interested in playing whatever we’re working on at the moment”. 

“I think we’ve always been a live band first and foremost. Even though I am proud of the records we’ve made I think we struggle a lot with making records,” he tells us.

“It’s just very difficult for us to feel as comfortable making records as we do live. Live you can be very free and very in the moment and it’s really hard to capture that on a record. We’re definitely feeling better about playing live than we are about recording music,” Diamond concludes.