Mount Pleasant to Manhattan: Gang Gang Dance

GANG GANG DANCE is a New York band. Its members live in Manhattan and make music that somehow finds a common language between Pharoah Sanders, Bollywood musicals and Kate Bush.

But keyboardist Brian DeGraw has fond memories of Washington, D.C. Before he skipped town to live in NYC, DeGraw and Gang Gang drummer Tim DeWitt spent a good part of the '90s dwelling in a Mount Pleasant group house and playing in gender-politicking spaz-punks The Crainium.

But when DeGraw describes Mount Pleasant it seems like a different place — or at least a place where you didn't have to worry about noise complaints. "It was really exciting. There were, like, five different group houses, and all of these people making music. You would just go from show to show," said the keyboardist, who resided here during the time when D.C. was home to edgier bands such as Cromtech, Monorchid, Metamatics and The Make-Up.

"I'm really sentimental about it. It was a period of hyper-education: I learned more during that time than the entire previous part of my life," said DeGraw after reminiscing about getting into free jazz and discovering Ethiopian music. "Before that I was in Connecticut listening to The Pixies."

Of course, things have changed a little over the years. "I was back there a while ago and I drove by The Embassy [a legendary D.C. punk "palace"]. It was such a beautifully run down piece of [crap] house, and now it's all landscaped and there's a BMW in the driveway," lamented DeGraw. "We probably paid $1,600 for the whole house — seven bedrooms."

Not that DeGraw has that much time to worry about steep rent in Mount Pleasant or the demise of the house-show scene. He's been too busy with Gang Gang Dance, which recently released its first DVD, "Retina Riddim" (The Social Registry). The project is mostly DeGraw's creation, a cut-and-splice art film that mixes documentary footage and tripped-out visuals. It also comes with a CD comprised of sound checks and concert recordings.

Meanwhile, Gang Gang Dance has sped through four studios while working on its next CD in an effort to attain the correct balance of punked-out rawness and radio gloss. "No one can really get the sound in between live and studio," DeGraw explained. "There will be an EP in the meantime that's made up from loose bits of those sessions that we liked but didn't want to use on the album."

What the new record actually sounds like is something that the keyboardist had a hard time explaining. "Things are definitely getting a little more dancey — a little less freaky, but who knows?

"It's weird. It's kind of like how I was talking to one of the dudes from Black Dice [a cacophonous Brooklyn art-noise trio] and he said that when they rehearse, to him, it sounds like straight up pop-music — like Weezer."

"I think that we're making much more accessible music [in Gang Gang Dance] — but to others, I'm sure it's still pretty [messed up]."

» Rock & Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NE; with Ocrilim and Exit Clov, Tues., 8 p.m., $10; 202-388-7625.

Written by Express contributor Aaron Leitko

» Download "Nomad for Love" MP3 from Gang Gang Dance's CD "From God's Money" (The Social Registry).

Top photo by Joshua Wildman; second courtesy The Social Registry