Formation and Early Years
Dead Can Dance formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981 with Paul Erikson on bass guitar, Lisa Gerrard (ex-Microfilm) on vocals, Simon Monroe (Marching Girls) on drums and Brendan Perry (Marching Girls) on vocals and guitar. Gerrard and Perry were also a domestic couple and they left Monroe in Australia when they moved to London in May 1982, where they signed with alternative rock label 4AD Records. With the duo, the initial United Kingdom line-up were Paul Erikson and Peter Ulrich.
The group's debut album, Dead Can Dance, which appeared in February 1984, was produced by the band. The artwork (see pictured), which depicts a ritual mask from New Guinea, "provide a visual reinterpretation of the meaning of the name Dead Can Dance", written in the Greek Alphabet. The album "featured drum-driven, ambient guitar music with chanting, singing and howling". They followed with a four-track extended play, Garden of the Arcane Delights in August. Allmusic's reviewer, Ned Raggett felt their early work had been "as goth as it gets", while this album saw them "plunging into a wider range of music and style".
For their second album, Spleen and Ideal, the group comprised the core duo of Gerrard and Perry with cello, trombones and tympani added in by session musicians. It appeared in November 1985 and was co-produced by the duo with John A. Rivers. Raggett describes it as "a consciously medieval European sound ... like it was recorded in an immense cathedral". The group built a following in Europe, and this album reached No. 2 on the UK indie charts. By 1989, Gerrard and Perry had separated domestically – Gerrard returned to Australia and Perry moved to Ireland – but they still wrote, recorded and performed together as Dead Can Dance.
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