Dead Can Dance

From Melbourne to 4AD

Dead Can Dance formed in Melbourne in early 1981 as a trio of Brendan Perry, the bassist Paul Erikson and the drummer Simon Monroe, with Lisa Gerrard joining soon after; Gerrard had played in Microfilm. Their first release was a home recording, "Fatal Impact", on the December 1981 issue of the Fast Forward cassette magazine. After an Australian farewell show on April 2, 1982 they moved to London that May and signed to 4AD. Their parents had emigrated to Australia from Ireland and England, and John Diliberto's 1990 interview records that the two bonded over Middle Eastern music while working in Melbourne's Arab and Lebanese restaurants.

The debut album Dead Can Dance (February 27, 1984 in Australia) was recorded in 1983 at Blackwing Studios in London with the engineer John Fryer; Perry later said it sounds overprocessed and thin to his ears. Spleen and Ideal followed on November 25, 1985, its title from Baudelaire, produced with John A. Rivers at Woodbine in Warwickshire, and reached number 2 on the UK indie chart. After Scott Rodger and James Pinker left, the band was in effect Gerrard, Perry and Ulrich, and Within the Realm of a Dying Sun was recorded in April and May 1987. The Serpent's Egg (October 24, 1988) was recorded mostly in a council flat on the Isle of Dogs; Aion (June 11, 1990) mostly at Perry's Quivvy Church studio in Ireland, drawing on medieval and Renaissance material; and Into the Labyrinth (September 13, 1993), their first album with no guest musicians, reached 47 in the UK and 122 on the Billboard 200 and made them 4AD's best-selling act, at about 500,000 copies. Spiritchaser (June 1996) topped the US world music chart.

Gerrard's vocals in this period are largely wordless or in an invented language; Perry described her approach as speaking in tongues as opposed to any particular tongue. The band split in 1998 while working on a follow-up, and a planned 1999 tour was cancelled; Gerrard and Pieter Bourke made Duality (April 1998) and Perry Eye of the Hunter (October 1999). They reunited for tours in 2005 and again for Anastasis (August 13, 2012, PIAS), followed by Dionysus (November 2, 2018), and the A Celebration tour of 2019 to 2022. Wikipedia currently reports that Gerrard is no longer involved and that Perry continues the name; that rests on Wikipedia alone. New singles in 2026 are sold on Bandcamp through Holy Tongue Records.