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Dead Can Dance

Here is yet another band that brings me back to my high school years (I'm obsessed with nostalgia - what can I say?) every time I get to listen to their albums. I was quite late to discover this australian duo comprised of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry (both relocated to London early in their career). I don't exactly remember the circumstances in which I first herd their music, but I recall this huge party me and my friend's were attending back when I was still living with my parents in the suburbs of Montreal. I didn't know many people there, we were in a friend of a friend of a friend's basement while the parents were gone. As the party started to die down, someone decided to enhance the mood and played Aion very loudly (the stereo was in another room). If you're young and impressionable, it's practically impossible not to be enthralled and mesmerized by Dead Can Dance's music. This was completely new to me at the time. I would mostly be listening to The Cure and Morrissey at the time, so this was the logical next step.

Dead Can Dance sounded mysterious and "deep" to my young teenage ears. Medieval and world music influences with incredibly dark and majestic overtones all bundled up along with pleasant, goth pop tendencies; how could an introverted kid like me not enjoy this? The music really spoke to me back then. Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun went on to become the soundtrack to my first trip to Europe (where I eventually met my future - and now ex- wife) as it followed me from the plane to the many cities and friends I met. However, just as quickly as Dead Can Dance came into my life, they disappeared. After Into The Labyrinth, I slowly got tired of their particular sound and actually hated Spiritchaser. I'm not sure if it was their tendency to redo the same album over and over again, or if it's because I started to associate them with the whole adult-friendly new age/world crap (this was back when gregorian chants and Enigma were the latest craze), but at this point I had had enough and decided to move on. Although I still respect them immensely for all the emotions I had experienced through their music, I felt like I had gotten all I could out of them. I did take a few quick glimpses at the duo's solo efforts, but never caught on.

Fast-forward a whole decade and I've pretty much completely forgotten about them. When heard that they were going to re-release their whole back catalogue as hybrid SACDs in 2008, I felt this was an opportunity to discover them all over again and pay back my dues for all that they represented to me back in the day (this is some serious make-out music folks!). So here they are again for me and you to enjoy. I might not see them as god-like entities as I once used to, but the duo certainly have created some very powerful sounds that I will be able to treasure and cherish whenever the mood is right.

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