Gang Gang Dance

Emerging from '00s NYC scene alongside improvisational freak-folksters like No Neck Blues Band and the industrial noise rock of Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance spent their early years shapelessly splitting the difference between those scenes, often from one release to the next, looking for a sound to call their own. But by 2008's Saint Dympha, they had quite unexpectedly found a direction. It was tribal and rigorously electronic, equal parts Dead Can Dance and Throbbing Gristle, at once more inviting and more cohesive than anything they'd delivered previously. Eye Contact firmly establishes Gang Gang Dance as a collective that only get better with age and experience. The '80s 4AD influence is strong, pushed along by Lizzi Bougatsos' echo-laden vocals. If it often sounds like GGD are difficult to describe beyond outside references to other bands, it's because their chief strength is assimilating odd aspects of the past and present ― goth textures, Compass Point-era pop, UK garage ― into one ever-tightening ball of sound. Eye Contact is good, but whether or not they'll reach a point of escaping references to others remains to be seen.