Long-time darlings of New York's ultra-hip, art-conscious underground music scene, Gang Gang Dance look braced to make a wider breakthrough with their new album Saint Dymphna, released in the UK on Warp. Like their contemporaries Out Hud, Gang Gang Dance makes a hybrid of post-rock and electro, punk and dance. But while Out Hud and particularly their sister act !!! (chk chk chk) often veer towards house and disco, Saint Dymphna is mostly scary, volatile stuff. While there are certainly parallels with LCD Soundsystem, GGD's take on dance-punk has less cross-over appeal and more in common with the darker acts on the DFA roster such as Black Dice and The Juan McLean. Despite the gorgeous Kate Bush-remixed-on-a ZX-Spectrum (if I may) of 'House Jam', Saint Dymphna is surprisingly un-dancefloor-friendly - sonically wild and sometimes abrasive. It combines some of the oblique electro sequencing of (fittingly) early Warp acts like Black Dog with a live-sounding spontaneity and ritualistic insistence on rhythm that recalls the Boredoms and ooioo.With most its tracks segueing together into one passage, Saint Dymphna is a journey of rushing peaks and noodly valleys. Lizzi Bougatsos's vocals - somewhere between Bjork and Yoshimi P We - will not be to everybody's taste, her spontaneous yelps and howls riding the vagaries of the music as if driven by tribal fervours. The trancelike quality also recalls math-rock mavericks Battles but there is less insistence on precision and groove, more on Dionyisan abandon. Like ooioo there is also a new-agey, cod-mystical influence that creeps stealthily into their music. One minute you could be listening to Autechre, the next ('Dust' for instance) it's all tablas and cosmic wonder - the transition is so subtle however, and the music abstract enough, that you don't begrudge the pan-global pick'n'mix.There is a raw, un-trebly aspect to the production that reminds me of Portishead's Third. They have retained the live aspect of the sound, a concert hall reverb (whether real or artificial) tangible in the same fashion as Pit er Pat's recent High Times. 'Bebey' begins the album with waves of synths and, er, pitter pattering metallic drums. The melodies at the core are unmistakably oriental and gradually this abstracted, global melodic signature insists itself. I'm very much reminded of Black Dog Productions classic 'Bytes', and how very blunt, mechanical textures are layered into pseudo-oriental grooves. 'First Communion' bleeds out of the opener with sudden orgasmic yelps from Bougatsos and a thrilling assault of synths built around a punk groove: think Crystal Castles jamming with ooioo. It's an exhilarating hit of high-octane noise that ends abruptly on a thrilling high.'Blue Nile' is bluesy, a dubby post-rock/house hybrid in the Out Hud school while 'Vaccum' is synth-driven prog that reminds me vaguely of Boards of Canada disciples Kelpe. 'Princes', with its garage beats and unlikely guest MC spot from UK Grime rapper Tinchy Stryder, seems a bit too zeitgeist grabbing - like those dance hip hop collaborations (Roots Manuva and Leftfield, Prodigy and Method Man) that surfaced in the late 90s. But it works better than it should, a full-on sonic mash-up of cavernous bub bass, insane synths and Stryder's abrasive East London raps. The flight-of-stairs-falling-down-a-flight-of-stairs electro of 'Inners Pace' is like a carnival (or just a riot) in a Tokyo amusement arcade, while 'Afoot' finds the singer making what sounds like some kind of political diatribe over massive landslides of dubbed out effects - cascading walls of echo chamber. Avant-garde electronic music for fans of psych rock, Saint Dymphna should suit fans of both. Cacophonous, adventurous, OTT, sometimes relentless but never ordinary, fans of all forms of experimental music should look no further. 83%Gang Gang Dance on MySpace