New Dead Can Dance video

Dead Can Dance 2019

At the end of last year, I gave Dead Can Dance my album of the year for their first album in six years, Dionysus (you can read my review of the album here  and look at my list of albums of the year here.)

The duo of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry have been responsible for some of the most exciting and original music over the last forty years. This excerpt from Dionysus, ‘The Invocation’ is accompanied by a rather lovely video. It was made by a Bulgarian company called Wonderswamp who state in the press release:

When we were contacted by Dead Can Dance we were very excited, as we had been fans of the band for many years and this was a great opportunity to create something for an act we admire.
When we heard ‘The Invocation’ the excitement grew as the song features motifs inspired by Bulgarian folklore music, and to see that our music and traditions can inspire them motivated us further. It was also an opportunity to create a narrative for a video based on ancient traditions that used to be practiced in our country and are still somehow preserved to the present day.
The match between these peculiar rituals and the band’s music could not be better.”

 

 

Dead Can Dance are conducting a European tour in May and June, and if you are going to see them I am very jealous…

The return of Dead Can Dance

November 2 will see the release of Dionysus by Dead Can Dance. It’s their first album for six years, following on from 2012’s Anastasis – and their ninth studio album in total.

Dionysus was the Ancient Greek God of wine (also known as Bacchus by the Romans). Taking its lead from the myth of Dionysus, the new album consists of two acts across seven movements that represent the various parts of the legend. Conveyed by an array of folk instrumentation, field recordings and chants, in true Dead Can Dance style.

The first track to be unveiled from the album is ‘The Mountain,’ the first part of Act II. In the words of Brendan Perry, “the listener will find themselves visiting Mount Nysa.
This mountain was Dionysus’ place of birth, where he was raised by the centaur Chiron, from whom he learned chants and dances together with Bacchic rites and initiations.”

According to the press release: Driven by Perry’s exploration of religious rites and rituals, ‘Dionysus’ nevertheless sees ally-in-arms Lisa Gerrard convey the feminine aspect of Dionysus’s dual nature through song in both solo and mantric choral forms and ultimately to play the role of Psychopomp, signifying Dionysus’s role as an agrarian deity returning to winter’s underworld to reassume the role of guide to dead souls.

The tracklisting for Dionysus is as follows:

ACT I : Sea Borne – Liberator of Minds – Dance of the Bacchantes
ACT II : The Mountain – The Invocation – The Forest – Psychopomp
By following this link, you can stream ‘The Mountain’ and pre-order Dionysus. You can also get details of the group’s world tour in 2019, which includes two dates at London’s Hammersmith Apollo.

 

 

Album Review – Dead Can Dance (re-issues)

Dead Can Dance – ‘The Serpent’s Egg’/’Aion’/’Spiritchaser’ (4AD)

There’s no shortage of musical acts whose output changed over their lifetime. Talk Talk evolved from challengers to Duran Duran to minimalist post-rock, for example. And who would have predicted the trajectory of Everything But The Girl from being King and Queen of bedsit Bossanova to drum’n’bass and clubland acceptance? Yet perhaps the most astounding evolution belongs to Dead Can Dance. Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard were lumped in with the goth-industrial scene of the 1980s when they released their self-titled debut in 1984. This may have been to do with being signed to 4AD but that debut, whilst strong, was not typical of the sound that Dead Can Dance would become most noted for. The Australian pair would produce a series of albums that drew on traditional music that at times crossed continents and centuries. The results were always high in quality, bewitching and beautiful, and some of the unusual music ever to be filed under ‘Rock & Pop.’ 4AD were probably the most suitable label for them to be on – it’s hard to imagine label head honcho Ivo Watts-Russell grumbling about the lack of an obvious single.
Between 1984 and 1996, the band produced seven albums, which have been re-issued over the last year on vinyl. (They reunited in 2012 to produce an eighth album, Anastasis.) The final re-issues (not quite sequentially) are their fourth, fifth and seventh releases.
The Serpent’s Egg, (****) originally released in 1988, was the last album made while Perry and Gerrard were still a romantic couple. The press release describes this album as ‘minimal but grandiose’, which is actually pretty accurate, and makes perfect sense when you listen to the album. The album opens with the glorious ‘The Hosts Of Seraphim.’ The album blends medieval and eastern influences – but so coolly and brilliantly it doesn’t need dance beats to try and bring it up to date (which, paradoxically, usually leaves results sounding very dated very quickly). Other highlights from the album include ‘Severance’ and ‘Ullyses.’ Usually when people talk of music being timeless they mean it sounds like it was made in the 1960s. So much of this – in the best possible way – sounds like it could have been made 500 years ago (technology notwithstanding).
1990’s Aion (****) is a great example of how judging a record on its cover might actually be pretty accurate: it’s  a section from the Earth phase of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch’s famed triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. The album is a mixture of medieval and Renaissance styles. It’s a record that follows on logically from its predecessor. The highlight here might well be ‘Fortune Presents Gifts Not According To The Book’. ‘Black Sun’ is another strong track on the album – which sounds almost untypically modern, yet utterly belongs on the album. There’s Celtic hints at times, too – but unlike so much music that tries to incorporate Celtic music it avoids tweeness or bombast. As with much of DCD’s music, it goes a long way to making you rethink the much criticised ‘world music’ label.
 
Spiritchaser (****) appeared in 1996. Over the previous few years they had gained a bigger following in the US, with their sixth album, 1993’s Into The Labyrinth selling half a million worldwide. Gerrard had released her debut solo album, The Mirror Pool in 1995 (she would go on to do soundtrack work, winning a Golden Globe for her work on Gladiator).
As with Aion, the album had been recorded at Brendan Perry’s Quivvy Church studio in the Irish Republic (as opposed to Egg being made on London’s Isle Of Dogs) by the album’s title, the band had moved  from the sound of the preceding albums to work with African and Caribbean tribal rhythms. Yes there are drums and percussion on earlier albums (check out ‘Mother Tongue’ on Egg) but this is an album driven by rhythm. This wasn’t intended as the band’s final album – rather that a planned follow-up was abandoned. Though the distortion on album opener ‘Nierika’ is a seemingly intentional false start, it again brings home the point that once you thought you had defined DCD, they would then surprise you. ‘Indus’ sees them share a writing credit with George Harrison – the melody is strikingly similar to The Beatles’ ‘Within You Without You.’ As an album it’s perhaps the most modern sounding (in a good way) than they had been since their debut.
It’s a joy to hear these albums as they were intended – they show how creative and original an act DCD were, and why they were more than just another goth band.
http://youtu.be/VPd-MSr19qI
nbb techno gremlins have attacked – check out dead can dance on youtube, spotify, deezer etc..