Dead Can Dance

Dead Can Dance was a band comprised of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry. Formed in Melbourne in 1981 and initially based in Australia, they disbanded in 1998.

After being relatively unsuccessful in Australia, they moved to London where after one year they signed up to alternative music label 4AD. They continued to work close together, until later in the 1990s when they started to grow apart. Lisa Gerrard returned to Australia, while Brendan Perry moved to Ireland. It is speculated that the distance between the members was an influence in their eventual break-up.

Assigning a musical genre to Dead Can Dance is difficult, as their style was particularly eclectic. However, their early work could be considered goth music. In their later work, after The Serpent's Egg, Dead Can Dance would take as sources ancient or foreign music from around the world, with Gerrard singing glossolalia, giving them a very distinctive style (world music). As a result their later albums sound exceedingly different from the first three.

Albums:

• Dead Can Dance (1984)
• Spleen and Ideal (1985)
• Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (1987)
• The Serpent's Egg (1988)
• Aion (1990)
• Into the Labyrinth (1993)
• Spiritchaser (1996)

There also exists a live album, Toward the Within, and a compilation, A Passage in Time. A compilation box-set was released in 2001 under the title Dead Can Dance (1981-1998) and a slimmer 2-cd version was released in 2003 under the title Wake.