Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance are an Australian neoclassical darkwave band from Melbourne. Currently composed of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, the group formed in 1981. They relocated to London the following year. Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance's style as "constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty; African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras, and art rock."[3]
Dead Can Dance
Melbourne, Australia
1981–1998, 2005, 2011–present
Paul Erikson
Simon Monroe
James Pinker
Scott Rodger
Richard Yale
Peter Ulrich
Career[edit]
Formation and early years[edit]
Dead Can Dance were formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981 with Paul Erikson on bass guitar, Lisa Gerrard (ex-Microfilm) on vocals and percussion, Simon Monroe (Marching Girls) on drums and Brendan Perry (also of Marching Girls) on vocals and guitar.[3] Gerrard and Perry were a couple who met as members of Melbourne's Little Band scene. Dead Can Dance soon became headliners at Melbourne's main post-punk venue, the Crystal Ballroom in St Kilda, and played an Australian farewell show there in May 1982 before moving to London, England, where they signed with alternative music label 4AD.[4] With the duo, the initial United Kingdom line-up were Paul Erikson and Peter Ulrich.[3]
The group's debut album, Dead Can Dance, was released in February 1984.[5] The artwork, which depicts a ritual mask from New Guinea, "provide[s] a visual reinterpretation of the meaning of the name Dead Can Dance",[6][7] set in a faux Greek typeface. The album featured "drum-driven, ambient guitar music with chanting, singing and howling",[3] and fit in with the ethereal wave style of label mates Cocteau Twins. They followed with a four-track extended play, Garden of the Arcane Delights in August.[3] AllMusic described their early work as "as goth as it gets"[8] (despite the group themselves rejecting the label[6]), while the EP saw them "plunging into a wider range of music and style".[9]
For their second album, Spleen and Ideal, the group comprised the core duo of Gerrard and Perry with cello, trombone and tympani added in by session musicians.[3] Released in November 1985, it was co-produced by the duo and John A. Rivers.[5] Raggett describes it as "a consciously medieval European sound [...] like it was recorded in an immense cathedral".[10] The group built a following in Europe, and the album reached No. 2 on the UK indie charts.[11] In 1989, Gerrard and Perry separated domestically – Gerrard moved to Barcelona before returning to Australia and Perry moved to Ireland – but still wrote, recorded and performed as Dead Can Dance.