Dead Can Dance

Beyond the countless hugely talented bands who released their records under its banner, Ivo Watts-Russell's 4AD will be remembered above all for launching two groups that have most captivated the imagination of rock fans (especially fans of "gothic" rock), and that have most revolutionised the very concepts of creating and experiencing rock music: we're talking about Cocteau Twins on one side, and Dead Can Dance on the other. And the latter, even more than the former, represented the absolute pinnacle of that exploration of sound, voice and atmosphere that came to be known as "dream-pop" - a label into which the duo formed by Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard (he English, she Australian, both singers, multi-instrumentalists, composers and arrangers) is forced only by virtue of their connection to the genre's actual "inventors" and standard-bearers, namely Cocteau Twins, and their shared home at 4AD.

In truth, it's hard to imagine a group further removed from any kind of "pop" than Dead Can Dance; it's even harder to imagine the history of gothic music without them: it would be like trying to imagine rock without Velvet Underground, pop without the Beatles, folk without Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Every artistic expression has its "masters", its benchmark: as far as gothic music of the Nineties is concerned (think of all the bands orbiting the American label Projekt, or projects like Germany's Aurora), the essential reference point is them: Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard. Dead Can Dance's influence runs extremely deep, and not only on a strictly musical level: the Anglo-Australian duo's importance lies first and foremost in having introduced into rock music a "learned" approach, a way of writing and building songs rooted in research that was not just musical but also literary, ethnographic and historical. Even their debut album, while still not straying far from a sound firmly rooted in "dark-wave" in the style of Joy Division, already showed both the first seeds of the esoteric, medieval-tinged sound that would become their trademark, and disorienting tribal digressions (it's no coincidence that the band's symbol, the visual representation of its name, is a ritual mask from New Guinea).

Hidden behind a lineup that echoed one of the most fashionable stereotypes of the Eighties (a musician/arranger and a female voice), Perry and Gerrard complemented each other both in composition and performance, splitting the songs more or less evenly and managing to fuse into a single "soul" two musical personalities that could not have been more different. While Perry, with his baritone voice and a taste for rich, imaginative arrangements, was a cultured and austere singer-songwriter, Gerrard — whose voice was far more forceful and nervously unstable than the fairy-like whisper of Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins) — preferred vocal exercises free of metre and grammar, laid over exotic, magical scores and sung in a non-existent language that blended together various "real" ones.

"Spleen And Ideal", the second instalment of their saga, immediately brings both their chemistry and their exploration close to perfection: there are still traces of rock here, which would later disappear entirely (culminating in 1990's "Aion", an album of "pure" medieval music), and plenty of electronics, though hidden and disguised. But the three opening tracks are a genuine journey through time and space. "Out of the Depths of Sorrow" gives us their own personal take on the "De Profundis", set to a score of synthesized liturgical choirs stretched to breaking point, endless organ phrases and isolated timpani beats; towering above it all is Gerrard's chameleonic singing, her "monstrous" vocal range allowing for ever more spectacular excursions, now a Middle Eastern litany, now a Renaissance religious chant.

"Ascension" is a brief instrumental led by a chivalric chorus of trumpets and trombones, with a menacing electronic drone in the background, set within an atmosphere of total rarefaction, anguished waiting and spectral suspense. "Circumradiant Dawn" is another hypnotic journey courtesy of Lisa Gerrard: accompanied by nothing more than an accordion used as a kind of "cosmic" synthesizer and sparse guitar chimes, her vocalizations seem to cross an ancient sky, starry and freezing cold. These three tracks mark the prologue to an arcane, spiritual epic that will not conclude on this record, but will keep evolving from album to album.

The rest of the record, on the other hand, is defined by Brendan Perry's philosophical, visionary ballads, among which the hypnotic rhythm of "The Cardinal Sin" and the magical carousel of "Enigma of the Absolute" stand out (the latter one of the absolute highs of their entire catalogue), both enriched by "chamber" contributions, cello and timpani in particular.

But there's no shortage of masterpieces on Gerrard's side either, who reserves two standout numbers in which to unleash her superhuman voice: the turbulent "Mesmerism", driven by frantic polyrhythms and a piano gone wild, before spilling into a wonderful whirl of strings and electronics, and the even more magical, spellbinding "Avatar".

But, as already mentioned, the artistic scope of Dead Can Dance isn't purely musical — if anything, the musical side is arguably the least interesting aspect compared to everything that lies behind their songs, that methodical, scientific approach of theirs, closer to the ethnological techniques of field research, or to experimental archaeology, than to musical composition. Every note, every arrangement and every word in their songs is the fruit of long, patient work of study, documentation and "experimentation", in pursuit of the perfect rendering of the atmosphere and era that the duo aimed to recreate each time, starting from very specific "signs" chosen with meticulous care.

"Spleen And Ideal" transports the listener into an alien world and time, ancient and remote, yet at once incredibly "familiar" and evocative, as if their combinations of harmonies and sounds were etched into our collective unconscious: perhaps this is also why it managed to reach number two on the UK independent charts. The underlying concept is well explained by Brendan Perry himself: "What we want to represent is the dualistic notion of choice. Ours is a Blakean universe in which humanity can only redeem itself by freeing itself from blindness, through the correct interpretation of signs and events that permeate the laws of nature… in this case 'Spleen' is seen as inextricably bound to the concept of 'Ideal'. On one hand it waits to strip the Ideal of its potential to exist; on the other it seeks to shape and influence the very nature of the Ideal. Correspondingly, our songs dealt with truth and illusion; with conditioning and freedom; with doubt and faith; and beneath all these dualities lies the pursuit of perfection, the attainment of the Ideal…" The pursuit of perfection, precisely: and of that pursuit, "Spleen And Ideal" is the first, fundamental building block.

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29/10/2006