4AD
Despite Gang Gang Dance’s last album 2011’s Eye Contact being their most critically and commercially successful the electronically geared NYC genre mashers have remained silent ever since showing zero signs of a followup as they entered full-on hiatus mode. While fans wait on a new album though they have GGD multi-instrumentalist Brian DeGraw to distract them with his new work as bEEdEEgEE.
Marking the project’s debut full-length SUM/ONE is exactly what you’d expect from a new-school GGD offshoot packing in digitalized beats and textures an eccentric sense of atmospheric headiness and just a touch a worldly melodicism. There’s even GGD vocalist Lizzi Bougatsos on the skittering dub-inflected “Like Rain Man.”
However DeGraw definitely makes bEEdEEgEE his own mainly by embracing a lighter almost playful vibe on much of the album. Often this comes via ’80s action-flick synths and some pointed new ageisms (see “Overlook” and the gorgeous Factory Records-tinted “Empty Vases” sung by Douglas Armour) or through more boisterous club-geared fare like “(F.U.T.D) Time of Waste” featuring Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor and CSS’s Lovefoxxx.
With bEEdEEgEE DeGraw is hardly lurking in Gang Gang Dance’s shadow — he’s emerged not only with his own sonic identity but a boldly adventurous dance-pop record as well.
