During their psychedelic late-00s peak, New York clique Gang Gang Dance formidably fused a disparate range of influences, incorporating tribal drumming, free-improvisation, a wide-ranging electronic spectrum and disjointed songwriting.
With the group’s last album Eye Contact released in 2011, last year their central hub/keyboardist/electronics man Brian DeGraw left the city and travelled upstate to rural Woodstock, NY. Twelve months of sketching, drafting and redrafting later, and under the typist-friendly guise of bEEdEEgEE, he released his first proper solo outing, SUM/ONE, in December. No less heterogeneous than Gang Gang Dance, but feeling more fastidiously sculpted, it’s a masterful mélange of trippy electronic pop that’s come straight out of the left field, with guest appearances from Alexis Taylor, Lovefoxxx from CSS, and Gang Gang Dance’s own Lizzi Bougatsos.
With the album released at the end of 2013, the Quietus caught up with DeGraw to discuss thirteen of his favourite albums, revealing an unsurprisingly assorted library, encompassing everything from Public Enemy and De La Soul to Scott Walker, Burial, Yoko Ono and Pharaoh Sanders. His list offers an insight into the influences and ideas that underlie both bEEdEEgEE and Gang Gang Dance’s trippy lumpy gravy.
SUM/ONE is out now via. Click on the image below to begin reading through Brian’s choices
