Dead Can Dance Spleen and Ideal In the Realm of a Dying Sun The Serpent's Egg Aion A Passage in Time Into the Labyrinth Toward the Within Spritchaser Dead Can Dance (1981-1998) Wake Momento
Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard were and are Dead Can Dance. Their highly successful 2005 live reunion makes it even less appropriate to speak of Dead Can Dance in the past tense, but their music has lived on in such a palpable way since their partnership was initially dissolved in the mid-1990s that it's always felt strange to consign them to a purely historical status.Brendan and Lisa made collages out of musical lineages, lost tribes and cultures long since forgotten - and by giving new life to so much from the past, they created a genuinely timeless body of work. They may or may not go on to make more music together but, whatever the future holds, the music that they have already made remains very much alive.They shared vocal responsibilities, and while Perry was certainly capable of haunting subtleties and real sonority as a singer, it was more often Gerrard's rhapsodic vocalising that drew the attention of critics and fans. In a sense, Gerrard didn't simply sing for Dead Can Dance: she made sounds with her voice, and turned that experience into something much larger and more far-ranging than mere singing. It's difficult to avoid sounding pretentious when attempting to write about such a unique talent, but it's true to say that, for Lisa, her voice became a way of exploring her inner world, her relationship to the physical environment, and to the world beyond, real or imagined.Perry's soundscapes blur distinctions between organic and sampled, old and new; they draw on disparate traditions (neo–classical, choral, baroque, troubadour); they weave together influences from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, the Mediterranean and beyond. Somehow Dead Can Dance managed to create a world of profound artistic integrity while simultaneously appealing to fans of what was termed 'alternative rock' music. And in so doing Dead Can Dance became - over the course of their career - 4AD's most internationally successful artists.Both of Anglo-Irish descent, Gerrard and Perry met in Melbourne, Australia in 1980. It was the height of the punk era. "Brendan was listening to things like The New York Dolls, but I recognised he was brilliant as soon as I saw him play", remembers Gerrard. She was more interested in avant-garde music, and intent on exploring her own personal vision, that recognition - that she had found a real partner in her musical quest - helped Gerrard see beyond those surface-level differences between Perry's approach and her own.While in Melbourne, the duo worked in a Lebanese restaurant together, washing dishes to save money to go to London. "It definitely influenced the work," Gerrard says of her exposure to the mix of Greek, Italian, Turkish, Irish and Arab people in the Melbourne neighbourhood of East Prahran, where she grew up. "The combination of that palette of colours with Brendan's understanding of musical structure began to create a unique colour.""The first piece we improvised together was called "Frontier". Something really magical happened that day. We realised that what we had done separately was nothing like what took place in that piece. It unlocked something that neither of us were aware of. And we had to do it again, so we started to write together."In 1982, frustrated by the limitations of Melbourne's music scene, Dead Can Dance transplanted themselves to London, but the move proved extremely challenging. The couple survived on unemployment benefit for the first four years, living in an uninspiring tower block on the Isle of Dogs in East London. But Brendan persisted in his search for a record deal and after being rejected by various labels who found their style too non-conformist, 4AD and Dead Can Dance discovered each other.Ivo had been running the label for nearly three years when he heard the demo tape that Perry had dropped off. "My strongest impression from the demo tape was of something really original," recalls Watts-Russell. ""Frontier" in particular, with Lisa’s incredible voice." But it would be another year before he could afford to take Dead Can Dance on.Having finally secured their contract, the group recorded a John Peel session for broadcast on national radio in November 1983. However it wasn't until March the following year that 4AD released their eponymous first album, a collection of the songs they had written over the previous four years. Recording that debut was not entirely successful. As Ivo says, "Dead Can Dance didn't really get on with the engineer. And they were never happy with the way that first record sounded."In addition to contributing two songs to the first This Mortal Coil album, It'll End In Tears, 1984 also saw Dead Can Dance recording a 12" single, "Garden Of The Arcane Delights". The following year brought their second album, Spleen And Ideal, which reached number two in the British independent charts. By now, Brendan and Lisa had begun to experiment more with instrumentation, abandoning guitars in favour of cello, trombone and timpani.Dead Can Dance toured extensively in 1986 and donated two songs, "Frontier" and "The Protagonist", to the 4AD compilation and video Lonely Is An Eyesore. They also released their third album, Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun, on which Gerrard and Perry divided vocal responsibilities evenly, with each side of the album featuring one member as lead singer. "I think that the relationship between them and producer John Rivers was at its peak with that record. It is probably my favourite record of theirs," reveals Ivo. "It pushed everything to a new world - it doesn't sound like anything else at all."Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun drew on Middle Eastern influences, a process that was further explored two years later by the The Serpent's Egg, which saw Dead Can Dance telescoping in on an earlier period of European music. By this time, the romantic elements had disappeared and atmospherics had come to dominate their sound. It was no coincidence that the film industry had begun to take note of the cinematic potential of Dead Can Dance's music, and in late 1988 the duo scored the Agustin Villarongas film El Nino De La Luna ('Moonchild'), in which Gerrard also made her acting debut.Despite their increasing success in Europe, it was not until 1990 that the group toured America for the first time. It was worth the wait, as they earned widespread critical acclaim, and sold out venues across the country. That same year, Dead Can Dance released their fifth album, Aion, a collection of songs which reflected their deepening interest in early Renaissance music. Aion featured Gregorian chants and baroque elements and was recorded using authentic 'early music' instruments, including hurdy gurdy and bagpipes.The following year, Gerrard and Perry assembled personal favourites from their body of work so far (plus two new songs, "Bird" and "Spirit") to compile their first American domestic release, which appeared under the title A Passage In Time. "We chose songs that would describe a journey, where the pieces interlocked," Perry says. "It's evolutionary, traversing something, as opposed to a time which is fixed and linear."In September 1993, Dead Can Dance released Into The Labyrinth, a record which confirmed Perry's refined mastery of electronics and samplers. Paradoxically, it was also an album with particularly pastoral inspirations, stimulated by his move, in 1989, to Cavan in Southern Ireland (Gerrard was by now living in the Snow Mountains of Australia). "It was a journey into a year of writing, very much focused on living in the countryside with rural people," says Perry. That same year Dead Can Dance music appeared in the Mark Magidson film Baraka; Gerrard and Perry also contributed two songs to the Hector Zazou album, Sahara Blue.The group's penultimate project, Toward The Within, was a live album recorded during their 1993 USA tour; a collection largely made up of previously unreleased songs. "It's a shame we didn't record more of their live performances," says Ivo. "The live experience of Dead Can Dance was most representative of the songs, since it pushed them further." Later, 4AD released an in-concert documentary film, directed by Mark Magidson, and also called Toward The Within. A mesmeric and emotive visual record, the film featured live footage from Dead Can Dance's show at the now extinct Mayfair Theater in Santa Monica.By 1995, Perry had begun work on a solo album, which was completed and released four years later under the title Eye Of The Hunter. Gerrard responded with a solo project of her own, The Mirror Pool, also issued in 1995.On what – so far - is their last album, 1996's Spiritchaser, Dead Can Dance made yet another shift, away from the distinctly Gaelic qualities of Into The Labyrinth, towards African and South American styles. "We decided to set ourselves limitations in terms of instrumentation", explains Perry. "To work from the basis of purely rhythmical means, and develop from there."Since Dead Can Dance's recording career came to a close, both Perry and Gerrard have continued to make music. Perry has scored films (including The Crossing Guard), theatre productions and local festivals. He also runs advanced percussion workshops and the Quivvy Samba school from his studio in Ireland. He is currently working on the soundtrack to a short film, Mushin, and a second solo album. Gerrard, too, has contributed to numerous soundtracks including Heat, The Insider, Ali, Whale Rider and most notably, Gladiator, which won a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination. She has made two further solo albums: Duality, in collaboration with Pieter Bourke, and Immortal Memory, with Patrick Cassidy.Contrary to the opinion of some, Dead Can Dance were not obsessed with the past, nor did they provide a sense of nostalgic escape into bygone ages. They severed boundaries and set music free from the fetters of time and place, soaring out of the immediate world. Musical outsiders they may have been, but Dead Can Dance’s vision and faith will ensure a continuing legacy and an undiminished appeal.
All things both Living and Dead.