Gang Gang Dance

Gang Gang Dance have toured a lot of countries, countries where the sea crashes upon the rocks, school kids bash instruments on street corners and the skyline looks nothing like anything in North America. Video clips of these travels, along with live images of the band, shots of missiles, fighter jets and food colouring dissolving in water, are interspersed to create Retina Riddim. The shots also serve as sound clips, where they attempt to create rhythm from the changing images. What results is part art house film, part tenth grade audiovisual class. It doesn’t feel like there is enough here to make any real statement — the sound clips rarely come together, the video jumps from one shot to the next and there’s little time to get a feel for anything other than repetition and the amateur style. The package comes with an accompanying CD that’s roughly half-an-hour of noise, which may or may not be from the DVD, but seems slightly more listenable and more of an experimentation with sound. The usually inventive band are almost completely displaced by this average offering.