The Enigma of the Absolute

Dead Can Dance is a bit of an anomaly in the pantheon of my favorite artists. The band falls clearly out of orbit of my two predominant musical spheres of interest (ambient and electronic) and barely graces other satellite curiosities (indie rock and post-punk). Instead, Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard gravitate towards that delightfully unspecific blackhole genre of World Music, which I suppose means that they use instruments that fall out of the purview of your average rock band -- eg. the yangqin.

During the group's most popular phase, spanning from The Serpent's Egg to Into the Labyrinth, Dead Can Dance could almost be described as a Renaissance cover band -- which isn't entirely inaccurate, as they did cover such medieval classics as "Saltarello" and "The Song of the Sibyl." But that doesn't quite encompass the enormity of the band's range or selection of source material, which includes 17th century Irish poetry and translations of Bertolt Brecht's stanzas. In fact, for its first few albums, Dead Can Dance sounded like what you would expect from a band signed to 4AD in the early 80s: gothic post-punk in a world of Joy Division imitators [half of the song titles sound like The Downward Spiral b-sides]. On the opposite end of band's career trajectory, Spritchaser, is graced with studio-processed didgeridoos from their native Australia and Vodun rhythms from Haiti.

Most, however, will likely recognize Lisa Gerrard as the voice behind the lyric-less wailing that you often hear in movie soundtracks as the protagonist goes down in slow-motion during that faux-nadir of the climax. Although this became a trope of 00's cinema after Gerrard won the Golden Globe for her work on Gladiator, I was first exposed to Dead Can Dance through the cultural voyeurism film Baraka, which prominently features Gerrard mourning over pictures of poverty and despair.

After my dad fell head over heels for the movie, the best-of disc A Passage In Time saw heavy rotation in the Wright household leading the Dead Can Dance to become the unintentional soundtrack to my marathon Quake deathmatches in high school. I'll forever have the classic rock hits of the 70s tattooed on my memory courtesy of my father but the Dead Can Dance are probably the only band that I inherited from him. I find it endlessly amusing picturing my parents surrounded by legions of goths when the Dead Can Dance played Kingsbury Hall in 1996.

I too was fortunate enough to catch Dead Can Dance live on the last concert of their final reunion tour in Chicago -- although "final" and "reunion" should probably be put in quotation marks. The latter as the band diligently alternated from Lisa-focused and Brendan-centered tracks throughout the night and the duo remained at arm's length; clearly, an "in it for the money" tour. The former as Perry recently hinted that two were going to reform for a new album and another world tour in 2012.

Although I feel a little shortchanged now that my 2005 concert will lose a bit of its cachet, I welcome any opportunity to see the band live again (having just seen Brendan Perry on his solo tour, I can attest that he has actually gotten better with age).

And maybe after you listen to this modest sampler of the duo's repertoire, you might be fortunate enough to catch them live as well.

The Enigma of the Absolute: A Dead Can Dance Modest Sampler

1. The Arrival and the Reunion [Aion]
2. Saltarello [Aion]
3. Black Sun [Aion]
4. Song of Sophia [The Serpent's Egg]
5. Enigma of the Absolute [Spleen and Ideal]
6. The Writing on My Father's Hand [The Serpent's Egg]
7. Ullyses [The Serpent's Egg]
8. Cantara [Within the Realm of a Dying Sun]
9. The Host of Seraphim [The Serpent's Egg]
10. Severance [The Serpent's Egg]
11. Spirit [A Passage In Time]
12. The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove [Into the Labyrinth]
13. The Snake & The Moon (Edit) [Spiritchaser]
14. The Lotus Eaters [Dead Can Dance: 1981-1998]
15. Mephisto [Aion]
16. Fortune Presents Gifts Not According To The Book [Aion]
17. I Can See Now [Towards the Within]
18. American Dreaming [Towards the Within]
19. Rakim [Towards the Within]

Enter the labyrinth via Spotify or iTunes. Unfortunately, SoundCloud started narcing me out.