A relaxed continuation of excellence
Lengthy, silent hiatuses are one of the riskiest prospects in music. In the current age of endless fast-paced media, if an artist isn’t doing something to stay in the public consciousness they risk being swept away by a sea of endless content. Gang Gang Dance doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned by this prospect, and why should they be? Despite seven long years passing since the excellent Eye Contact, not a single group has made an album that sounds like them, affording them a unique place in the hearts of their fans. Kazuashita rewards that patience and leniency from fans with an engaging and significantly more laid back masterclass in experimental music.
While so much time has passed since their last album, Gang Gang Dance’s penchant for intermissions remains strong. The record is almost divided into portions by parenthetical songs “(infirma terrae),” “(birth canal),” and “(novae terrae).” Each track individually may feel like little more than a distraction when viewed in a vacuum, but when placed in the album, they provide areas for the group to break out of the album’s lush, calming sound and make some impressively bold moves toward the avant-garde.
The first pair of non-parenthetical tracks are singles “J-TREE” and “Lotus,” both of which are some of the standout tracks of the record. “J-TREE” is a smooth bouncy track replete with lightly tapped drums that could’ve just as easily come from an Animal Collective track before the song opens up with a rush of bright, lingering guitars. The track closes with a recording of an interview from the Dakota Pipeline protests, ending with a joyous proclamation from the interviewee as a herd of buffalo come over the hill. That brief moment marks one of the only overtly political moments in the discography of Gang Gang Dance and the soft lead-in and ecstatic exit from the sample lend it a poignant emotional nature that is not easily forgotten. “Lotus” by comparison is relatively laid back. The main line of the melody is deeply inspired by The xx, lending it a dreamy ethereal feeling. Much like The xx, “Lotus” is undeniably groovy and engaging, the relaxed jazzy drums and lightly squeaked vocals make it unmistakably a product of the explosive imaginations of Gang Gang Dance.
Listeners who were fans of Saint Dymphna and Eye Contact may find themselves wondering when the record will get weird. Elements of previous songs hinted at a potential to hit the strange crescendos of its predecessors, but the plug was pulled each time before they dove off the cliff edge. “(birth canal)” is the first truly strange moment of the record, an entirely instrumental track populated only with the twittering of birds and strange theremin whistling that leads into the equally strange title track “Kazuashita.”
It begins with a man listing out colors over a post-rock guitar tremolo before launching into a deep thrum of synths and jazzy drums for the remainder of the track. The result is a track that not only serves, fittingly, as the centerpiece to the record, but is also among the best tracks in the group’s catalog, with an emotional arc that is second to none in its genre. As the album winds down from its heights, the group takes the time to engage in deeper experimentation with the profoundly odd “Snake Dub” and eventually closes out with the lovingly bright “Salve on the Sorrow.” This track is overwhelmingly similar to “Plainsong” by The Cure before it falls into some keyboard-based antics.
Kazuashita is unfortunately not without its share of flaws. Certain tracks like “Too Much, Too Soon” begin to overstay their welcome, and the transition parentheticals, while important to the flow of the record, feel as though they could be pulled into their nearby companion tracks without causing issue. It also frequently starts down exciting paths before abandoning them, leaving listeners wondering what could have been.
Yet for its flaws, Kazuashita is an excellent return for Gang Gang Dance that does nothing but showcase them excelling in an even greater range of styles than they did before. And while their inspirations are readily visible for all to see, they remain a wholly unique act that offers a style of music that no other band has managed to recreate on any level.
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