Country: Australia / UK
On 27 July, 1987 an album so great was released that it would easily have earned the title of the best album of the decade so far... had it not been for Solitude Standing by Suzanne Vega that was released only four months earlier. Adding insult to injury, this also meant that there was no way this masterpiece could even win the title of Album of the year, even though it would easily have won it on any preceding year in the eighties. Life isn't fair.
We have taken note of Dead Can Dance before. Until now, the art rock group led by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry had released two full length albums: the self titled record in 1984 and Spleen and Ideal in 1985. Also, there had been an interesting EP in 1984 called Garden of the Arcane Delights. These releases had already shown much promise; in particular, Spleen and Ideal was a truly interesting, if a little sombre album and definitely one of that year's best. However, with the new album Within the Realm of a Dying Sun the group took an unanticipatedly massive leap forward into genuine art of the very highest order.
Dead Can Dance were now working at the peak of their talents. The stunning album opener Anywhere Out of the World is already more than enough to capture the listener's full attention. All tracks on the album are credited to both Gerrard and Perry, but it sounds like they have divided the singing duties in accordance with which one of them is more strongly connected with the material. Like on their later solo albums, the songs Perry sings have a more general art rock feel, whereas Gerrard sings on those that are more ethnic or harder to approach.
On Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, these two main styles of Dead Can Dance have been neatly divided on the two sides of the vinyl disc. Perry sings on side A; Gerrard sings on side B, and there is the occasional instrumental composition in between. Anywhere Out of the World, embedded above, begins Perry's half of the recording, so to speak. It is then followed by a beautiful instrumental that has been embedded below.
As impressive as Anywhere Out of the World is, it was Windfall that truly convinced me back when I was listening to the album for the first time. Yes, the opening track had been great. But the fact that the second track succeeded in even improving on it was an unmistakeable sign that we were now fast approaching Album of the year level excellence. Windfall is simple in structure, but endlessly powerful in delivery. Even the third track In the Wake of Adversity succeeds in being yet another masterpiece. Brendan Perry sings again, and his deep voice brings an atmosphere of its own to the music that has by now established a genre of its own.
Perry and Gerrard, who have come to be known as the faces and voices of Dead Can Dance, were not actually the only members of the group even now that they were in full control of its musical development. There was still a third full member Peter Ulrich, who played timpani and snare drum. There had also been a number of other members on the previous albums, but by now they had all left and following this one, Ulrich would also leave.
Following the outstanding one, two, three, there are finally some minor bumps on the road. The closing track of Perry's A side, Xavier is obviously weaker than the first three, although not a failure by any means. Gerrard's B side opens with an even weaker introduction, Dawn of the Iconoclast, but as it runs for only two minutes, it doesn't take us long to move forward into some of the greatest musical moments of the decade.
The mesmerizing sixth track of Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, called Cantara, is an undying classic that helped me learn an important lesson at the time of its release. I hadn't been paying much attention to ethnicity as an interesting element in music; here, it works wonders. Lisa Gerrard sings, the percussion as well as some of the other instruments bring Near East world music to mind, and the repeating melody that opens the track and carries on throughout is simply lovely.
At the time, I felt that Cantara was the real signature track of Dead Can Dance. Later on, I have actually come to like the next song Summoning of the Muse even better. Like its predecessor, it opens with a memorable melody that carries nearly all the way to the end and is this time played with an instrument that sounds like a bell chiming. Gerrard sings with an angelic voice, with several vocal tracks mixed on top of each other. There is a nice video for this masterpiece embedded further below.
Following all this greatness, it is a slight disappointment that the B side ends a little like the A side did: with a fourth song that is longer than any of the first three, yet not fully satisfying. Persephone (The Gathering of Flowers) is a beautiful song, a little better than Xavier, but not quite as ambitious as the previous two and therefore not as memorable. Gerrard's voice is however again simply divine.
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