Day 420: Dead Can Dance – Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
We’re inching closer to Halloween, my favourite day of the year, so it’s time to dust off the good old neoclassical darkwave to get into the spirit of things. I was originally going to listen to a new Dead Can Dance album that’s in a different musical direction, but I thought I should start by listening to their original works – it’s the season for music like this, we might as well embrace it.
Album cover courtesy of 4AD
Dead Can Dance was formed in 1981 in Melbourne by vocalist and guitarist Brendan Perry, vocalist and percussionist Lisa Gerrard, along with two other members who didn’t continue with the group. The pair relocated to London in 1982 and got signed to 4AD, becoming a part of London’s gothic scene, taking inspiration from medieval and renaissance music, as well as neoclassical, folk and world music. They were also a part of This Mortal Coil, 4AD’s music collective, who I’ve written about very early on in the project.
Their third studio album, Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, was released in 1987, and it featured Perry, Gerrard and drummer Peter Ulrich, along with a host of orchestral musicians. This album was the first one where they wanted to explore other instruments outside of those used in a standard rock album, saying “We realised we had been limiting our musical visions [before], relying around guitar, bass and drums. These instruments weren’t adequate to express a lot of the things we were hearing.”
The album is divided into two parts, with the first half featuring vocals by Brendan Perry and the second one with vocals by Lisa Gerrard, whose voice you may recognise from her doing the score of Gladiator. It’s an album of dark and atmospheric music that transcends the goth rock reputation that the group has – I for one didn’t expect to hear something that’s so ethereal that it occasionally sounds like it wouldn’t be too out of place in some sort of a historic religious rite. You can really hear the medieval or historic inspiration to it, it’s the sort of music that sounds like it’s channelling a different era.
I like their sound, probably not enough to listen to this again, although this would be pretty banging background music for my gothic novel reading project. It’s still not really something I see myself returning to, it’s just not the sort of atmosphere I’m keen on invoking on a regular basis, because this feels very much like an atmosphere album – it’s not musically the sort of thing that blows you away, but it does build a mood. I’m giving this one a 7/10, but I could imagine there’s something else in their discography that would sonically be more up my street.