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Baker's Dozen

Blissful Resonance: Brian DeGraw Of Gang Gang Dance's Favourite Albums
Tristan Bath , January 14th, 2014 06:16

With Brian DeGraw's debut solo album as bEEdEEgEE released last month, the Gang Gang Dance founder member speaks to Tristan Bath about thirteen of his favourite albums, from Scott Walker and Pharaoh Sanders to Burial and Public Enemy

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Burial - Untrue

I first heard this album on Thanksgiving 2007, just after it was released I think. GGD were in Copenhagen for a show, and we spent Thanksgiving night in a borrowed apartment, cooking Italian food, smoking lots of hash, and listening to Untrue on repeat… over and over. As I listened I had the feeling that I was floating inside a very dark yet gentle storm cloud. I was drifting, but not in the way one drifts to white-light ambient music or magic-hour new age. It was a different type of drift… something that evoked thoughts of lonely nights with the perfect buzz, when you're vibing with a rainy alleyway and a gloriously crooked walk to nowhere.

This record draws a very blurry line between lightness and darkness, I think that's what makes it so unique-sounding, and although it conjures up a specific mood in my head, it also somehow seems to makes sense no matter what my surroundings are, which I definitely can't say for many records. It fits well in those rainy alleyways, but it also makes perfect sense when I'm in headphones at a desolate beach, or on a crosstown bus on a sunny day. It draws new meaning and metaphor out of less obvious circumstances and environments.