Originally posted at Trip Inside This House on January 29, 2009:
Gangi – A
It’s an excellent arrangement of loads of strings, keys, and skins, done as only Matt Gangi can do. A very unique psych/folk sound with a strange almost-poppy edge.
PRESS …
Blogger Night and GANGI
Originally posted at Feed Your Head on January 9, 2009:
Thursday night (January 8, 2009) I headed over to Spaceland to see Gangi play their first set of 2009 and to celebrate Matt Gangi‘s birthday. Playing on a bill with Daedalus and Blank Blue brought a different crowd to see them. I think they won over some new fans in the process of playing their usual high energy, nicely thought out set.
Matt and Lyle Nesse had cooked up some new arrangements for some familiar songs which I thought was awfully thoughtful of them to do for us regular fans. Unfortunately it sounds like the process almost got them evicted for rehearsing late into the night. With their penchant for recording and sampling, Matt even played us one neighbor’s terse message: “Matt! You said 25 minutes, it’s been 55 now. STOP PLAYING!!”
They opened with the normal rendition of “Commonplace Feathers” which is also the song that pulls you into their album, A. It’s a great song and was followed by new mixes of “Ground” and “Subject Positions” which added a whole new level of interest for me. I often think of architecture when I hear them play, the way they build their song structures from the ground up, so each variation can have an effect on everything that follows.
They played a new song that is a work in progress (that I heard last time at The Echo) called “The Gun Show”, a hideously ironic love song that may also be the name of their next album.
I like the song already and they say it’s not even finished. With the dynamic “Waiting On the Line” they got a great ovation at the end, and I had to dash out of there and go home so I could go to bed, get up and do it all over again.
Bands to Watch 09: Artists to Watch in 2009
Originally printed in Campus Circle on December 23, 2008:
Gangi – Matt Gangi, multi-instrumentalist and Williamsburg resident, moved to Los Angeles and paired up with percussionist Lyle Nesse. Together they are Gangi, performing to those hip kids in Silver Lake, offering a blend of hip-hop and dance punk inspired by both of the above and all in between. Their show is rather visual, though you’ll have to get used to Gangi doing that “DJ” thing, where he stands at his table and silently says “check it” over and over by pointing his hand in the air. myspace.com/gangimusic
Ten Best Albums of the Year
Originally posted at Feed Your Head on Sunday, December 21, 2008:
Gangi – A (self release) released: Apr. 29, 2008
This is the second most original CD I heard this year. After Amnion opened my brain to their wild potpouri of influences, Gangi took it a step further, into the realm of electronics. I like having my brain stretched and a lot of music did that his year, but Gangi asked me to accept, what appear to be, wildly disperate elements carefully piled up onto each other, topped off by the slightly strangled sounding vocals of Matt Gangi. Lyle Nesse providing the foundation with his hyperactive drumming and recorded samples.
It was a live show that first introduce me to this band and I found their music immediately intoxicating. I ran up to Matt Gangi, babbled like a fool and bought the CD, A. I wondered if they could ever capture on a recording what I heard live. Well they do!
I’ve written about this band a bit, but to repeat, I love the way they carefully construct the layers of sound, piling them on top of each other until this incredible musical structure seems to float in front of you. I’ve also seen them win over a crowd time and again and have the audience rush the stage at the end to try to get a CD.
The variety of styles they master on this short CD are daunting. From the lilting melody of “Commonplace Feathers” that starts things off, you know this is not normal music, it’s such a wild assortment of sounds. I particularly love the obscure and plaintive quality of “Ground” with it’s dialog samples and circular tune, beautifully sung and sounding like it was created in a junkyard in India.
“Subject Positions” and “Animals” are other stand outs, but there isn’t a weak track in the nine that are included here. Their influences seem to come from everywhere, including rock and roll, jazz, classical, International pop, Indian ragas, you name it.
Transplants from the fertile New York City music scene, they are a most welcome addition to the ever exploding Silverlake scene.
GANGI!!!
Originally posted at The Rebellious Jukebox on December 17, 2008:
I hope you get a chance to check these guys out as I think they are really awesome, I found them via the myspace page earlier this year, first time I heard the peaceful sound of Common Place Feathers I was hooked.
I love the sound its a description yet for you to decide on. Some other ace tunes are Subject Positions, Ground, Animals and Region Two which are on an album that was released called ‘A’. I Spent the whole summer (when it was nice weather!!) listening to this Album in cars, gardens and on my phone. Its awesome go check them out!! get on it!!
If you check on there friends list there are plenty of Artists similar to this sound one in particular my favorites Rainbow Arabia and The Electric Tickle Machine.
Gangi also participated to an album titled Perfect as Cats which is a tribute to The Cure earlier this year, they did ‘Fire in Cairo’ which I was extremely Impressed with, there are plenty of tunes by artists you may of heard of like theThe Dandy Warhols and Bat for Lashes. There is some many different experimental sounds. Electronic Noise Folk I would say.
As this site is about your say lets us know your thoughts and views if you get a chance to listen to any of these let us know what you think.
GANGI Back in Town (with blackblack and voicesvoices)
Originally posted at Feed Your Head on December 16, 2008:
Monday night (December 15, 2008), well rested, I headed out to The Echo to catch Gangi in their first local show in a while. Just back a week or so from their tour across the country with Rainbow Arabia, I was looking forward to seeing them before the end of the year. It was also great to catch up with Matt Gangi and Lyle Nesse after all these months…
As Gangi sets up, they populate the stage with diamond shaped hangings of multi-colored pastel patterns arranged to give the sense of visual balance. It compliments the aural balance they achieve in their music. I think they approach music as a geometrical or mathematical challenge to be solved. They nearly always do just that, adding what’s necessary and subtracting what’s superfluous. Just as the auditory dialog samples they use don’t clearly define the song, they merely suggest.
Their show Monday night reaffirmed why I’m so taken with this band. Matt and Lyle wowed an appreciative crowd with their magical concoctions. Beginning with “Commonplace Feathers” and then into “Subject Positions” the sound was great. But Matt’s mike went out at that point and I feared the worst, but the soundman sprang into action and the band resumed with little delay and a refreshing lack of frustration at the glitch. Nice professionals.
They also sang “Shift” and, of course, “Animals” and a new song which they said they’d only played about five times and never before an audience. It sounded just as polished as the rest of their numbers and it bodes well for their next album.
You feel that these guys enjoy composing just as much as performing. You could see it in the way they played a song only a few days old. I felt privileged just to hear it. Terrific concert.
GANGI – A – (Record Review)
Originally posted at Drowned in Sound on December 11, 2008:
Given that Matt Gangi has gone to such an effort to create layers of gorgeous sounds behind (relatively straightforward, boldly strummed) acoustic guitar parts, it would seem appropriate to swathe Paisley-patterned metaphors all over this review, whilst fawning over the (pretty damn exciting) inclusion of a cribsheet of obscure lyrical allusions. Not just a glossary, though, but a kind of mind-map exploding the associations of each song-title with the Joycean trick of breaking them down pseudo-phonetically, into new words. For example: “transitional floodplain (trans-ish-annul-Fula-HUD-plane)” where you’re told that HUD = US Dept. for Housing and Urban Development, and the Fulani are W. African nomads.
Problem is, it also seems irresponsible not to come right out and tell you the guy’s voice could be a deal-breaker for many listeners. It’s not quite Elmo from Sesame Street, but you’d have to stick a finger in each corner of your mouth to sing along. Basically, he sings like Van Dyke Parks, or Jad Fair from Half Japanese, but Jad gets away with that (or does he?) with a distinct note of humour, and endearing lyrics that make him sound like a cartoon character courting.
Okay. Caveat out the way, let’s turn back to the lyrics. The English postgrads will be speculating that the title is an allusion to Louis Zukofsky’s epic poem, “A” (1928 – 1968) often considered a folly on a par with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1922 – 1939), even by their fondest admirers. Both were conceived at a time when new media were expanding the infosphere and historic scope of serious writers, but over-exposure to TV hadn’t yet made it seem perverse to demand that readers actively process all those complex references at once. Recognizing the latter problem in the 21st century, perhaps, Matt keeps this tuneful and short (at 31:52), but it’s still fiendishly dense.
Lyrics aside, here are some reasons to wade into the soundscape: voices, guitars, various synths, programming, drums, bells, flutes, pans, tea kettles, bass, samples (NYT & EPA, etc.), mandolins, autoharp, banjo, echo machines, etc. All of these are blended exquisitely, to evoke ancient Iraq, pre-colonial Nebraska, the Sahel, wherever. If you haven’t heard Ribbons, then think Heaven Sent by Half Japanese, or Dusk at Cubist Castle by Olivia Tremor Control, except with an even more painterly blending of instruments beneath the rhythm guitar, like a funkless Byrne & Eno.
Still, the album’s central conceit is a mixed blessing: the tunes are immediate, throughout, which keeps you listening again & again, but the emphasis on weaving connections between images and events across space & time, often impedes the emotional impact. Zukofsky’s poem partly took aim at the hypocrisy of American intervention in Korea & Vietnam, and Gangi likewise seems to be waving a hundred-fingered hand at American neo-imperialism in Africa, and elsewhere, hinting that there are parallels to the earliest and cruellest empires, ruled by god-kings, and that some of the victims of foreign policy (nomadic peoples) and of domestic policy (immigrants, usually middle-class) might provide better cultural and socio-economic models for navigating the world of the 21st century (see, for instance, anthologist Pierre Joris on the benefits of a “nomad poetics”). If this turns your crank, then give it a stab; if not, the vocals are a mixed blessing, as already stated, because none of this is forced on you. It’s an active listening experience, after all.
GANGI – Animals
Originally posted at RCRD LBL on November 12, 2008:
So recently, most tributes to animals has us thinking of that SNL clip of ‘Mark Walberg’ talking to a donkey. But while this song by the LA-based psychedelic folk rock group Gangi is dedicated to animals, it’s probably more in the ‘I saw a three-headed caterpillar while tripping in the woods’ sort of sense. We are just guessing because the whole album “A” has an isolated, airy vibe (after all it was recorded in Matt Gangi’s Brooklyn apartment), while tribalistic drumming and shimmery electronic experimentations provide a psychedelic trippy feel. Speaking of trippy, you’ve got to appreciate the band’s visual sensibilities as well, with a collage of color on the CD case and a habit of performingnext to bright colored mobile sculptural installations.
SOUNDS LIKE: The Ruby Suns, The Octopus Project
Gangi – “A” (album review)
Originally posted at Your Psychedelic Tunes’ Blog on November 11, 2008:
If you haven’t heard them yet, you’re just not listening. The album “A” from Gangi is an amazing compilation of folk succumbing to its wonderfully psychedelic side.
Matt Gangi and his vision come through loud and clear with this album. From the truly fresh and individual vocal stylings of Gangi himself to the recycled card stock CD wallet, and the inclusion of instruments ranging from the standard of guitars, bass, and drums to the not so standard mandolins, flutes, tea kettles, and the always welcome mellotron, this record has it all covered.
It’s mellow listening, but by no means boring; it’s exciting and new and yet in no way unbearable. Anyone walking those fine lines of music listening between indie, folk, and psych will no doubt get lost happily inside these sounds, but I’ll go so far as to say that this record seems to shatter those boundaries of labels, a less common phenomenon amongst a lot of “DIY” bands today.
Turn it on, it’ll turn you on.
Favourite tracks include: “Waiting on the Line,” because it’s got the faintest hint of a garage track blended so well with Gangi‘s style, “Ground,” for its ability to make me sway back and forth regardless of how I was feeling before the light sounds hit me, and “Animals,” which is just one of those instant classics you can’t explain, but don’t need to; everyone gets it.
Album Reviews: Spindrift, GANGI
Originally posted at LA Times. Reposted at Buzzbands.la on November 11, 2008:
Gangi, “Gangi” (Office of Analogue and Digital) — There are a lot of tools to rattle in this L.A. duo’s garage, and at times they are used to excess on this sprawling psych-folk document. But at its strongest, this subtly electronic record reminds you sonically and thematically of Mercury Rev, except with the engine in need of a tune-up. When Matt Gangi and cohort Lyle Nesse keep it relatively simple (“Comonplace Feathers,” “Subject Positions”), it fires on all cylinders.
||| Download: “Animals”
||| Live: Among Gangi’s upcoming dates is a Dec. 3 gig at the Airliner.