The Dead Can Dance were one of the seminal "atmospheric" rock experiences of the 1980s and 1990s in that they were among the first to succeed in the feat of assimilating a gothic, exotic, medieval, classical sound into the rock song struct…
The Dead Can Dance were one of the seminal "atmospheric" rock experiences of the 1980s and 1990s in that they were among the first to succeed in the feat of assimilating a gothic, exotic, medieval, classical sound into the rock song structure. The starting point was an austerity that seemed the exact antithesis of the spirit of rock and roll: their music is icy, inert, ghostly. The songs leverage two suggestive factors: the arrangements, which would become the rock equivalent of chamber music, and the female singing, which would become the rock equivalent of the lied. Both the arrangements and the singing coined a new gold standard for an entire generation of rock musicians. The arrangement constituted the most salient fact. Each album changed "setting" and set the tone for a new era, moving from the Gothic of the early days to the religiousness of the second album, from the archaic of the third to the exotic of the fourth, from the Renaissance of the fifth to the Celtic of the sixth.
Dead Can Dance was formed in Melbourne, Australia, by English multi-instrumentalist Brendan Perry in the late 1970s and in 1980 absorbed Australian singer Lisa Gerrard. The pair settled in London and released the album Dead Can Dance (4AD, 1984), which made them inevitably likened to the dream-pop of the Cocteau Twins, although in fact the atmospheres descended directly from the gothic punk of Siouxsie and Joy Division: gloomy harmonies were crudely woven through (mostly electronic) occult ceremonial cadences, electronic dissonances, and oriental chords of guitars, and over so much mournful and morbid grounding were hovered screams (Fatal Impact) and Perry's otherworldly chants (The Trial, Wild In The Woods); or over a background of tribalism and noise stretched an arabesque litany of Gerrard (Frontier and Threshold). In Ocean, a lake of chords and wailing created the background for a distant echo of Gerrard, seeming to intone a religious psalm in an anguished voice. The rosary closed with Musica Eternal, an astral ralenti` that remains the album's best insight. Except in East Of Eden and the title track, the musicality of the work was next to none; the success of the operation rested entirely on the suggestion of the whole.
Source: https://www.scaruffi.com/vol4/dcd.html
Tracklist:
A1 The Fatal Impact 00:00
A2 The Trial 03:22
A3 Frontier 07:04
A4 Fortune 10:17
A5 Ocean 14:04
B1 East Of Eden 17:25
B2 Threshold 20:48
B3 A Passage In Time 24:22
B4 Wild In The Woods 28:25
B5 Musica Eternal 32:11
Genre: Goth Rock, Ethereal
Carrier: LP
Year of release: 1984
Label: 4AD
Country: UK
Audio Codec: FLAC
Rip type: image+.cue
Recording format: 24/192
Distribution Format: 24/192
Digitization source: by the author
Vinyl Condition Code: NM
Playback device: Technics SL-1300
Recorder head: Ortofon 2M Black
Preamplifier: tube (6SQ7 Berlin HF - in; 6AG7 RFT - out)
ADC: Creative Professional E-Mu 0404 USB
Digitizer: Adobe Audition CC
Processing: -
