Dead Can Dance

Dead Can Dance biography

Dead Can Dance (sometimes referred to as DCD) are an Australian/British ethereal neoclassical duo formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981, by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry. The band relocated to London in May 1982 and disbanded in 1998. Their 1996 album Spiritchaser reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums Chart. Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance as having an ambient style of world music that "constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty; African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chants, Middle Eastern mantras, and art-rock."

Dead Can Dance formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981 with Paul Erikson on bass guitar, Lisa Gerrard (ex-Microfilm) on vocals, Simon Monroe (Marching Girls) on drums and Brendan Perry (Marching Girls) on vocals and guitar. Gerrard and Perry were also a domestic couple and they left Monroe in Australia when they moved to London in May 1982, where they signed with alternative rock label 4AD Records. With the duo, the initial United Kingdom line-up were James Pinker, Scott Rodger and Peter Ulrich.

The group's debut album, Dead Can Dance, which appeared in February 1984, was produced by the band. The album "featured drum-driven, ambient guitar music with chanting, singing and howling". They followed with a four-track extended play, Garden of the Arcane Delights in August. Allmusic's reviewer, Ned Raggett felt their early work had been "as goth as it gets", while this album saw them "plunging into a wider range of music and style".

For their second album, Spleen and Ideal, the group comprised the core duo of Gerrard and Perry with cello, trombones and tympani added in by session musicians. It appeared in November 1985 and was co-produced by the duo with John A. Rivers. Raggett describes it as "a consciously medieval European sound ... like it was recorded in an immense cathedral". The group built a following in Europe, and this album reached No. 2 on the UK indie charts. By 1989, Gerrard and Perry had separated domestically - Gerrard returned to Australia and Perry moved to Ireland - but they still wrote, recorded and performed together as Dead Can Dance.

Dead Can Dance's albums were not widely available in the United States until the early 1990s, when 4AD made a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Records. 4AD allied itself with the Beggars Banquet Records Group, which included that eponymous label and XL Recordings in the US, but the band's recordings remained distributed through Warner Bros. Records. Subsequent releases, however, have been licensed to Rhino/Atlantic Records, a sister label within Warner Music. Their 1991 compilation, A Passage in Time, remains with 4AD independently of the Rhino and Warner Bros. deals; it was initially only released in the US.

Their sixth studio album, Into the Labyrinth, was issued in September 1993 and dispensed with guest musicians entirely; it sold 500,000 copies worldwide and appeared on the Billboard 200. The band had become 4AD's highest selling act. They followed with a world tour in 1994 and recorded a live performance in California which was released as Toward the Within, with video versions on Laserdisc and VHS (later on DVD). Many unofficial bootlegs of concerts spanning their career exist, containing several rare songs that were only performed live. Toward the Within is the duo's only official live album. It reached the Billboard 200. Gerrard released her debut solo recording, The Mirror Pool, and recombined with Perry for the Dead Can Dance studio album, Spiritchaser, in 1996. The album also charted on Billboard 200 and reached No. 1 on the Top World Music Albums Chart.

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