Rawwar

The highly experimental Brooklyn combo Gang Gang Dance have, like many adventurous New Yorkers before them, parlayed sheets of artfully sculpted noise, found sounds, and a carefully cultivated air of mystery into a critically acclaimed string of albums. Despite these accolades, for a time it seemed as though Gang Gang Dance’s work might languish along with that of their critically beloved, but commercially moribund forbearers DNA, James Chance, and Lydia Lunch. 2005’s *God’s Money*, which traded almost ambient sound-scapes, for a more beat driven sound that elevated the groups incantatory jams and sound collages above the level of vaguely diverting instrumental noodling and into the realm of art. The *Rawwar EP* continues this development, and its three tracks provide a canny fusion of the globetrotting exoticism of groups like the Sun City Girls, and the knowing mythmaking of more theatrical acts like The Swans. Though moments on the *Rawar EP*, particularly the industrial clanging of the nearly twelve minute “Earthquake That Frees Prisoners,” approach the disorienting abrasiveness of the group’s early work, their more confrontational tendencies are reigned in by a newly found fascination which middle eastern melodies, and spacy dub-like production.