Dead Can Dance
 Both
of Anglo-Irish descent, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry met in
Melbourne, Australia in 1980 (the duo worked in a Lebanese
restaurant together in East Prahran, washing dishes to save money
to go to London).
Spiritchaser (1996) was Dead Can Dance's
unforgettable swan song. The album presented the sound of a
lost culture, where ethereal singing, overlapping harmonies, and
trance-like tempos served to calm, relax, and enchant.
Exotic instrumentation abounded, but nothing seemed out of
place - not even a borrowed melody from The Beatles' Within
You Without You.
Instead of tricking out Rock & Roll traditions in a new
all-black wardrobe, this intoxicating band offered a different
point of entry into the world of Goth.
Here was the ethereal, the feminised, the tribal and the
anciently mysterious - just the thing for girls and boys who liked
to wander about in velvet pretending they had a pre-Raphaelite
case of TB!
4AD eventually released all nine Dead Can Dance albums on CD -
remastered by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi) - with replica LP
sleeves.
 Beautifully
presented in a velvet-covered box, each album included additional
booklets with lyrics, album labels and extra images.
Gerrard and Perry's punk roots shone through on such tracks as A
Passage In Time, but Musica Eternal and Ocean
put them on the same dreamy, delinquent shores as The Cocteau
Twins.
Lisa Gerrard went on to compose the film score for the movie Gladiator. Perry
and Gerrard came together again in 2005 for a live reunion.
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