I had to check my back ups to find to my surprise i never posted anything by todays band. I know i had my eye on them but the band is difficult to pigeonhole, and they don't exactly fit the Sundaze label either. But they deserve the attention, at the time they rose from obscurity in the mideighties in the wake of the 4 AD label rise to glory and subsequently raising eachothers profile. Their big sound has been recently remastered by Perry for CD and SACD, these rips won't disappoint you either.
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Dead Can Dance (sometimes referred to as DCD) were an ambient, world music band which formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981. Its mainstays were Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry. The band relocated to London in May 1982 and disbanded in 1998, but reunited temporarily for a world tour in 2005. Their 1996 album Spiritchaser reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums Chart. Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance as having an ambient style of world music that "constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty... with African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chants, Middle Eastern mantras and art-rock".
Dead Can Dance formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981 with Paul Erikson on bass guitar, Lisa Gerrard (ex-Microfilm) on vocals, Simon Monroe (Marching Girls) on drums and Brendan Perry on vocals and guitar. Gerrard and Perry were also a domestic couple and they left Erikson and Monroe in Australia when they moved to London in May 1982, where they signed with alternative rock label 4AD Records. With the duo, the initial United Kingdom line-up were James Pinker, Scott Rodger and Peter Ulrich. The group's debut album, Dead Can Dance, which appeared in February 1984, was produced by the band. The artwork, which depicts a ritual mask from New Guinea, "provide[s] a visual reinterpretation of the meaning of the name Dead Can Dance". The album "featured drum-driven, ambient guitar music with chanting, singing and howling".They followed with a four-track extended play, Garden of the Arcane Delights in August.which saw them plunging into a wider range of music and style, in fact it set them on their musical style.
For their second album, Spleen and Ideal, the group comprised the core duo of Gerrard and Perry with cello, trombones and tympani added in by session musicians. It appeared in November 1985 and was co-produced by the duo with John A. Rivers Raggett describes it as "a consciously medieval European sound ... like it was recorded in an immense cathedral". The group built a following in Europe, and this album reached No. 2 on the UK indie charts. By 1989, Gerrard and Perry had separated domestically – Gerrard returned to Australia and Perry moved to Ireland – but they still wrote, recorded and performed together as Dead Can Dance.
For the next two years, Dead Can Dance were relatively quiet, releasing only two new songs in 1986, both which appeared on the 4AD compilation Lonely Is an Eyesore. Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, the group's third album, appeared in 1986. In 1988, the band released their fourth album, The Serpent's Egg, and wrote the score for the Agustin Villarongas film El Nino de la Luna, which also featured Lisa Gerrard in her acting debut. Aion, Dead Can Dance's fifth album, was released in 1990. Also in 1990, the group toured America for the first time, earning rave reviews. The following year, the group was involved in various festivals and theatrical productions. In 1991, the compilation A Passage in Time was released on Rykodisc, making it the first American release of Dead Can Dance music. Early in 1993, the group provided the score to Baraka and contributed songs to Zazou's Sahara Blue.
Their sixth studio album, Into the Labyrinth, was issued in September 1993 and dispensed with guest musicians entirely; it sold 500,000 copies worldwide and appeared on the Billboard 200. It was a cult success throughout the U.S. and Europe, making them 4AD's highest selling act.They followed with a world tour in 1994 and recorded a live performance in California which was released as Toward the Within, with video versions on Laserdisc and VHS (later on DVD). Many unofficial bootlegs of concerts spanning their career exist, containing several rare songs that were only performed live. Toward the Within is the duo's only official live album. Gerrard released her debut solo recording, The Mirror Pool, and recombined with Perry for the Dead Can Dance studio album, Spiritchaser, in 1996.The album also charted on Billboard 200 and reached No. 1 on the Top World Music Albums Chart.
In 1998, Dead Can Dance planned a follow-up to Spiritchaser, but the band separated before it was realised. One song from the recording sessions, "The Lotus Eaters", was eventually released on the box set Dead Can Dance (1981-1998) and on the 2-disc compilation Wake (2003). Gerrard teamed with Pieter Bourke (Snog, Soma) to issue Duality in April 1998. Perry released Eye of the Hunter in October 1999. DCD reunited in 2005 and released limited-edition recordings of 13 shows from its European tour, and 8 recordings from the subsequent North American tour, as well as a compilation titled Selections from Europe 2005. These concerts were recorded and released on The Show record label.
On 28 March 2010, in an interview for Bulgaria’s Katehizis.com online music magazine, Perry revealed the possibility of a future Dead Can Dance reunion: "Yes, I’ve been talking about it with Lisa [Gerrard]. Maybe in the end of next year we’ll start work again. We’ve been talking about doing something like taking a small chamber orchestra – 10 or 15 people – and tour with them. And we have to write songs. We have to write new material – totally new – so the whole, entire set will be a new album. Then we’ll go into the studio after the tour, record, produce and release a record as well.
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Early punk backgrounds and the like behind them, Perry and Gerrard created a striking, dour landmark in early-'80s atmospherics on their first, self-titled effort. Bearing much more resemblance to the similarly gripping, dark early work of bands like the Cocteau Twins and the Cure than to the later fusions of music that would come to characterize the duo's sound, Dead Can Dance is as goth as it gets in many places. However by the time they recorded the Arcane Delights EP (later that year) crystalization of what would become 'their sound' was in full gear and to come to full bloom one year later on the Speen and Ideal album.
I + Garden Of The Arcane Delights (EP) (84 116mb)
01 The Fatal Impact 3:21
02 The Trial 3:43
03 Frontier 3:13
04 Fortune 3:47
05 Ocean 3:21
06 East Of Eden 3:23
07 Threshold 3:34
08 A Passage In Time 4:03
09 Wild In The Woods 3:46
10 Musica Eternal 3:51
Garden Of The Arcane Delights
11 Carnival Of Light 3:32
12 In Power We Entrust The Love Advocated 4:11
13 The Arcane 3:49
14 Flowers Of The Sea 3:28
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With this amazing album, DCD fully took the plunge into the heady mix of musical traditions that first appeared on the previous Arcane Delights EP and would come to define its sound and style for the remainder of its career. Calling it "haunting" and "atmospheric" barely scratches even the initial surface of the album's power. The common identification of the duo with a consciously medieval European sound starts here considing the mystic titles of songs, references to Latin, choirs, and other touches that make the album sound like it was recorded in an immense cathedral. The overall feeling is of an ancient religious service suddenly brought to life in a truly modern way, with stunning results.
Spleen And Ideal (85 89mb)
1 De Profundis (Out Of The Depths Of Sorrow) 4:00
2 Ascension 3:05
3 Circumradiant Dawn 3:17
4 The Cardinal Sin 5:29
5 Mesmerism 3:53
6 Enigma Of The Absolute 4:13
7 Advent 5:18
8 Avatar 4:35
9 Indoctrination (A Design For Living) 4:14
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