Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact Album Review

Eye Contact is a beautiful, fragile, fading echo of the eighties. It's the sound of somebody catching sight of that decade out of the corner of their eye, in a dream. Nothing captures the essence of the eighties quite as comprehensively as the humble synthesiser; and that instrument dominates Gang Gang Dance's excellent new album, shimmering, shining and billowing gloriously.

The gleaming synth sounds nod almost imperceptibly to the dreamy electronic music of the late eighties; so, also, do the band's sleek, buffed-clean production values and their sad-eyed, keening vocals. But this is eighties synthesiser music stretched, bent out of shape and made loose and baggy; music re-imagined by a jam band who have never been allowed to listen to the sounds they're recreating, but once had those sounds described to them by an enthusiastic dilettante. The results are strange and compelling. 'Adult Goth' typifies the album's engaging contradictions: it sounds at once inviting and alien, melodic and awkward. Lis Bousgatos supplies keening, effectively wordless vocals which sadly, suavely circle the melodic electronics. 'Mindkilla' sounds like a distant cousin of DJ Mujava's 'Township Funk', but swathed in layers of retro-futuristic synths. The eleven-minute opening track, 'Glass Jar', builds casually but inexorably from a sparse but pretty mixture of tapping percussion and gliding, breeze-like electronics. Incidentally, opening your album with a song which stretches over the ten-minute mark is a brave decision, but one which pays off: its slow build and insistent rhythms hypnotise the listener, conditioning them perfectly for the relaxed-but-odd sounds to come.

There's something increasingly Knife-like about Gang Gang's music. Like the work of Swedish oddballs The Knife, Eye Contact conjures up a complicated emotional mood; like their best work, it can sound both emotionally warm and distinctly icy at the same time; and like The Knife's frontwoman Karin Dreijer Andersson, Bousgatos sounds both other-worldly and vulnerable. This complexity, and these contradictions, are intriguing, but the record is by no means interesting only on an intellectual level. On the contrary, it's an immersive experience which is both superficial enjoyable and full of details which reward repeated listens. It's also a real step forward for Gang Gang, whose previous album, Saint Dymphna, was entertaining but rather erratic. Eye Contact is far more consistent than its predecessor, both stylistically and terms of quality. It's the sound of a long-running band taking a big step forward and writing music with greater confidence and boldness than at any point in their career; and it's one of the best albums you'll hear this year.

Nick Gale