Customer Reviews

God's Money

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Alright, listen. I am a pretty critical person, especially when it comes to music. The fact of the matter is, if you listen to a LOT of music, you will have a harder and harder time finding albums you really love, because the bar keeps getting raised in your mind. God's Money is probably my favorite album of the past year because it defies everything I expect music to be, but I can certainly still call it music without any hesitation, and beautiful music at that.

Anyone who is trying to put this in some stupid genre like freak folk or whatever is doing a huge disservice to the album. Firstly, it really doesn't sound anything like Animal Collective, or whatever else you are trying to compare it to. Any sonic similarites are coincidental - the intent of the two groups is completely different. Secondly, this music is best appreciated without any context, just on the merits of its composition, instrumentation and production. Don't even think about Brooklyn or stupid stuff like that. It really has nothing to do with the music.

If you are reading any of these reviews, and listening to the music, wondering why anyone would rate God's Money highly, you truly haven't understood the album yet. Yes, there is something there, you just need to discover it, and once you do you'll be amazed you ever lived without it. I really mean it - look how many reviews I've ever written for anything after using Amazon for like 6 years. It's that important to me to share this album with others.

I owe my enjoyment of God's Money entirely to a friend of mine who convinced me to give it a chance after I'd listened to one track from the release and it didn't sink into my craw. I did as he said, and sat down and listened to the entire album. After the first listen I was mildly intrigued but not wowed, but by the end of the second spin, I'd been won over. A strange group that mixes freak folk, electronic ambience, and tribal passions, these New Yorkers have created a bizarre hybrid album that's worth checking out if you're looking to veer off the path a bit.

One of the main factors in deciding whether or not you enjoy God's Money will be your tolerance of the vocals of lead singer Lizzi Bougatsos. Veering wildly between using her voice as a subtle texture and going full-force with almost Yoko-ish wails, she's one of the primal forces holding the album together. Usually, I don't find myself enjoying such overly theatrical female vocals, but it actually tends to work. After opening with a shorter introduction track, the album launches into "Glory in Itself / Egyptian" and Bougatsos babbles and sings, croons and howls over pounding drums, cascading electronics, and bursting waves of synths.

"Egowar" follows and takes sounds that are usually new age fodder (pan flutes, rain sticks) and twists them into a dancey, world-music laced track that melts into a glorious overload towards the end. "God's Money V" takes on a more aggressive feel again and the dark instrumental mixes juicy synths with polyrhythmic kitchen-sink percussion that melts into "Before My Voice Fails," a track that progresses like a bastardized opera with multiple layers of delayed vocals from Bougatsos, almost proggy instrumentation. The final blowout of rattling percussion, scorching guitars, and soaring vocals is one of the best moments on the entire disc.

Between the longer tracks are shorter instrumental pieces that fit the mood of the album quite well and offer up some nice textural pieces from the group. "God's Money VII" sounds like an ephemeral piece of old 4AD music (think This Mortal Coil) and "Untitled (Piano)" is a shimmering pool of liquid notes that slowly falls apart and completely off the reels. At just under forty minutes, the nine tracks on the album are just about the right length to drop in and pop you in the mouth, then scurry off into some dark corner again. It's probably not for everyone (my wife asked "is this the Muppets doing electronic freak folk?"), but for me it's a great mix of left-of-center music that manages to stay just on the side of "not annoying in their weirdness."

(from almost cool music reviews)

I didn't know what to expect when i listened to this. The name 'Gang Gang Dance' sounds half punk half tribal, while God's Money suggests either fey Yankeehotelfoxtrot tenderness or some violent catharsis a la the Swans - half right, it seems. God's Money is complex but never chaotic and smacks you straight in the face of brazen beauty when you least expect it. The percussion on the first track began like the ritualmagick John Zorn was fooling with on Iao a year ago, but come track 3, "Egowar", and I'm completely blown away by the Japanese-sounding folk vocals (is that in English? Damn!). Animal Collective's Here Comes the Indian remains the more cohesive and exciting tribal freak folk album, but for what it's worth, God's Money is quite an immersive experience.

This is such an unusual band and the music they make is far out just on the edge of tribal space. This is my favorite of their releases so far. I love the fact that you don't need to think about the music, making great back ground music. There is a sense of eastern influence and instruments used that you wouldn't here in most popular music. The vocals are more chants and hymms and babelling. There are other comparisons but that might lead you to think the wrong idea. This is very New York and yet very world all at the same time. Jungle to ambient to trip to experimental. Give it a chance it is worth the money.

I honestly don't know whether to grin or groan at the prospect of yet another Brooklyn hipster band. Since Williamsburg is now officially overexposed as a hipster haven, it's theoretically safe to dismiss any new music emanating from its gentrified environs. Well, my dear shoppers, in this case that would be a grave mistake, since in Gang Gang Dance the bar has been raised, the envelope has been pushed, the next level has been attained and all other cliches can give it a rest: this is the breakthrough album of the year. It will make you hipper just by clicking on the above sound samples. Just imagine how fulfilled your shallow little lives will be if you actually throw down some silver for this sure-to-be-treasured product! No amount of cheap irony can disguise my enthusiasm for Gang Gang Dance.

A truly weird blending of styles takes place here. Psychedelia, ambient, glitchy electronica, dub, tribal rhythms and some mutated strain of pop are locked in sweaty sexual congress and the child they produce has a cry so beautiful you won't want to feed it for a week. This is "world music" if by "world" you mean "Mars." Fans of the Cocteau Twins and Bjork have a new band to obsess over. Some naysayers will start whining about how they resemble Animal Collective. These people are retarded. While the Collective are a fine thing, their often gimmicky confections often float away on the ether, bereft of any unifying structure. GGD, on the other hand, give just enough indication that they're actually playing a song before the computers come in to turn that song on its head.

This is some seriously messed-up stuff, but stoners and other hippies need not apply. This is music for people who like to keep their minds turned ON, thank you very much. Oh yeah, and you don't have to live in Williamsburg to "get it," which is a good thing, 'cause I wouldn't move there anyway. That place is so OVER.

I'm coming a little late to the party here......but I just got "God's Money". For the first 15 years of my listening to experimental/electro, music like this was almost always from Europe, most likely Belgium or more recently, Japan. So it's good to see us Yanks catching up a bit.
At times the decidely avant garde vocals get a bit much for me and it occasionaly sounds like they're trying a bit too hard, but overall the music is gorgeous and simple/complex at the same time. I'd give it 5 stars but I'm feeling a bit niggardly. Overall a beautiful audio experience.

The new offering from Gang Gang Dance needs more than a few listens to get into and to love it or hate it, if that's the case. Although the music is quite weird, the performance sounds very natural and effortless. Check out the inside of the sleeve and you will find images of mosques, arabs and machine guns. God's Money is a musical reflection of the world as we know it today, and it succeeds. World music indeed.

An admitted novice to avant-garde rock, I hesitantly stepped foot into this world with the purchase of Gang Gang Dance's "God's Money." At first, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this genre, and I was a bit afraid of what I would find. I had read reviews of GGD and others, and was hard-pressed to find a consistent feeling for what I would find upon a first listen.

No more than 15 minutes into this album, I was a believer, and I would even go as far as to say a fan. I have since discovered the likes of Excetper and Can, and am thoroughly fascinated by this emerging genre. Whatever you call it, be that Freak Folk, or New Weird Americana, whatever; its dang intriguing stuff. Enough of that, on to the music.

The album begins innocuously enough, with tribal drumming ushering in a pseudo-African chant by vocalist Lizzi Bougatsos. It is Bougatsos' voice that emerges as the centerpiece of this entire work, and it will probably be your appreciation of her vocal stylings (or lack thereof) that will ultimately determine your enjoyment of this record. There are echos of Kate Bush in her musings, with all sorts of tribal influences. Her voice is still used instrumentally in several tracks, but others allow her to take on a more traditional lead-singer role ("Glory in Itself").

The music itself, recorded over a one year period at New York's Junkyard Audio Salvage, is the musical equivalent of fractal geometry. There are no regular sides, no hooks to really hold on to, but every tiny piece is magnificent in its own right. Each instrument and vocal feels like a tiny piece of string, but they are all masterfully woven together by near-flawless production into a cohesive whole. It almost feels as if the producer took every piece this quartet recorded that year, smashed it all into tiny pieces, chose the best, and put them together in a new way.

And then there is Tim Dewitt's drumming. It has been quite some time since I've heard percussion as solid, inventive, and just plain cool. I found myself simply focusing on the percussion so much that I had to relisten to several tracks (i.e. "God's Money V") just to hear the other parts of the music. From deep steel drums to traditional kits, Dewitt has created a drumming masterpiece in God's Money.

All that being said, this is certainly not a record for everyone. As stated previously, an immediate detraction to Bougatsos' voice will almost certainly taint the entire record for some. For others, the "out there" nature of the more experimental tracks will steer them another direction. But for those who can shrug off everything else and sit inside this record, there is a marvelous world to discover in God's Money.

Be warned, this is not the kind of album that you can throw on and fall in love with in the first couple minutes. It's rather difficult to grasp all what's going on and what the band is trying to do. But give it one more whirl and, unless your a real shmuck, you'll most certainly be forced to give it round three. Great smoking music, impress your friends!

On God's Money, Gang Gang Dance manage to channel their diverse and seemingly contradictory influences (ranging from Kate Bush to dub, from Yoko Ono to ambient drone) into a seamless and organic whole. With a few exceptions the tracks flow one into the other almost imperceptibly. One could conceive this album as a single extended track - and with the way it breathes and pulsates and occasionally chokes and writhes - even as a living 'thing'. There is no 'noise' here that doesn't serve some purpose - in my own view, all of it invokes a subtle tension between immanence and transcendence, between order and chaos. And if I've used somewhat religious language here to describe what they've accomplished that's not an accident. It's that good.