Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 10:36:00 EST From: Rob Galgano (0005338863@MCIMAIL.COM) Subject: DCD article from the Boston Globe - 7.12.96 Global spirits: Dead Can Dance make world music mystical By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 07/12/96 Attentive listeners have tried to define the music of Dead Can Dance for a long ime. Is it a world music group, since it has used Arabic chants, Algonquin Indian prayers, Indian r gas, Celtic bagpipes and Haitian rhythms? Is it a New Age group, since its ethereal vocals e ho those of Enya? Is it a progressive rock group, since elements from Led Zeppelin and George Harr son have turned up in its sound? Is it a classical group, since string orchestrations have played a important role? Or maybe a techno group, since the duo has used computer sampling? All of the above, if you like. There's no other act quite like Dead Can Dance, whose members have embarked upon an "artisanship of exploration of different musics, structures and colors," says singer Lisa Gerrar . She's been with workaholic partner and fellow global village adventurer Brendan Perry for seven tudio albums. The latest is the meditative *Spiritchaser,* which leads up to the duo's show at Har orlights Pavilion next Friday night. "There's been a lot of sparks and creative electricity through the years," says errard. "But I think we've really arrived at a creative marriage where we speak with one tongue It's a really exciting time for us. Either it's the end, or it's the beginning of another genr of the work." The new *Spiritchaser* sounds like a beginning. It breaks fresh ground with hypn tic weaves of African percussion, overlaid with the unutterably beautiful voice of Gerrard, an intellectual Australian native who views her voice as representing "an abstract vocabulary th t lies within the collective unconscious." "There's the practical, speaking voice, which I'm using to talk to you now. And hen there's the voice of the spirit," says Gerrard, who sings in several languages and sometimes makes up her own words to fit certain melodies and mood states, as on the new song "Devorzhum." "I know that I'm at my most mature when I sing. And in some ways I feel that bec use of the dedication to the work, I have stayed a baby in other areas of my life," she say . So dedicated is the Dead Can Dance duo that they spent nine months crafting soni textures for the new disc, which was recorded at Quivvy Church in Ireland. "There's a Siamese-twi sort of experience that takes place through the work process," says Gerrard. "We were together seve days a week, working very closely on every nuance of the voice structures and the percussive reas that Brendan mostly came up with. "Sometimes we can write a piece of music in half a day and it's finished. Other imes we'll spend two months on a piece of music, grinding and grinding until you literally dissol e into bits and rebuild yourself in front of this piece of work," she says. And much of the work is purely intuitive. There's no master plan. "When Brendan and I work together, we don't speak much. We sing a lot and play a lot and do things like that, but we don't really talk much. We usually only speak when we strike o something. All of a sudden Brendan will turn around and say, `Oh, that's good what you're doing th re. Hang on to that.' Or I'll say to Brendan, `Oh, I love that.' So we'll either put it into th computer or we'll explore it further. And we'll explore it until we no longer think it works or it leads us into something else. "Or we may say, `I feel like I'm in a forest now. Can't you imagine this too?' A d if we both agree, then we'll pursue it. "There are many ways of looking at the work. There are the practical things that take place, that I'd say Brendan has always been the stronger in. And there are the abstract prop rties that exist within the work that I've always been stronger in," says Gerrard, who also relea ed her first solo album last year. She readily admits, though, that Perry is the more driven member of the duo in p rsuing the ethnic musics that have made Dead Can Dance so hard to characterize. "Brendan's been st dying anthropology and has been since I first met him," says Gerrard, who moved with Perry to Londo in 1981. ``Prior to this new record, he did a study of Haitian music and vodun [invocation] rhyth s. And Outo is the spirit that he's talking about. That's the spirit that comes around a percussion st to make it possible for him to communicate with the spirit world." Occasionally, Dead Can Dance's unlimited explorations - and uncanny ability to i ternalize music from all over the globe - can lead to problems with the everyday physical world. One minor problem resulted from the new song "Indus," which had a short melodic pattern so similar to George Harrison's "Within You Without You" (from his Beatles days) that the group had t give him partial songwriting credit. "We don't know whether we stole it or not. We probably did, but who the hell kno s?" says Gerrard. "It wasn't deliberate, because we didn't remember the record. I'm really unfamil ar with the Beatles' work, I have to confess. Brendan knows a bit more about it. ... But the next minute, musicologists are saying, `Oh, the first six notes are the same.' So we had to c ntact George Harrison, who didn't give a damn, frankly. He was gardening at the time. He said `Oh, I like that piece of music. It's OK.' But the [record company] pushed it. So we had to give credit to Harrison on the thing, which seems really bizarre." This story ran on page 59 of the Boston Globe on 07/12/96.