I\u2019ve never really known much about Dead Can Dance, other than they are comprised of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, whose voices ring out through the strange and mythical soundscapes of the music. They have been described by Australian music historian, Ian McFarlane, as “African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras, and art rock.” If that helps at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To me at the age of 16\/17 they were just wonderfully dark, and weird, and melancholic and beautiful. Songs sung in words that I always just assumed were Gaelic, though they could just as easily have been Elvish, for all I knew. The effect being that unable to understand the lyrics, the vocals simply became another instrument weaving together to create a musical tapestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometime in 1989, a good friend of mine and her brother were housesitting a lovely spot in Joburg, and they\u2019d invited a few of us to come stay. We termed it \u2018the house of no parents\u2019 and much fun was had. One late night with everyone asleep, I awoke in the dark to the sound of strangely beautiful bells chiming above a deep orchestral thrum. I climbed out of bed and tip-toed through the house following the sounds. A woman\u2019s voice joined the thrum of bells and cellos, \u201cCantara, cantara, cantara\u2019 she chanted, in ever lower tones.
As I turned the corner to the lounge, there upon the couch, sat my friend\u2019s brother, looking like a Bond villain, complete with cat upon his lap, as the operatic voice of Lisa Gerrard continued to belt out of the hi-fi. It was love at first hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was my introduction to Dead Can Dance, and Within the Realm of the Dying Sun.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve never really known much about Dead Can Dance… whose voices ring out through strange and mythical soundscapes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,47,48],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-album-stories","tag-favourite-albums","tag-ig-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenathlone.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}