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Dea d Ca n Da nce (album)

Dea d Ca n Da nce is the debut studio album by Australian musical act
Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance. It was released on 27 February 1984 by record label 4AD.

Contents
Background
Production
Musical style
Album cover
Release
Reception
Touring Studio album by Dead Can Dance
Track listing Released 27 February 1984
Release history
Recorded 1983
Personnel
Genre Post-punk · gothic rock ·
References
ethereal wave
External links
Length 35:01 (original)
51:06 (re-release)

Background Label 4AD

Producer Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance commented on their official website regarding the name of
the band and album: Dead Can Dance chronology
Dead Can Garden of
To understand why we chose the name, think of the Dance the Arcane
transformation of inanimacy to animacy. Think of the (1984) Delights
processes concerning life from death and death into life. So (1984)
many people missed the inherent symbolic intention of the
work, and assumed that we must be "morbid gothic types".

[1]

Production
The album, according to the sleeve notes, was recorded at "Vineyard".

The musicians who performed on the album were Brendan Perry, Lisa Gerrard, Paul Erikson, James Pinker, Scott
Rodger and Peter Ulrich. Erikson returned to Australia and was replaced by Rodger.

The instrumentation consisted of guitars, bass guitar and drums, with added percussion and the very distinct sound of
the yangqin, as played by Gerrard.

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The beginning sample on "The Fatal Impact" was taken from the 1964 film Zulu, and was recorded off of a television
broadcast onto a cassette player. The drum machine used was built into the same cassette player. The percussion
featured in the track consisted of three upturned, empty five-gallon paint tins tied together. This unorthodox
instrumentation was one of the main reasons this song was not performed live at the time.

Musical style
AllMusic commented on the album's sound: "Bearing much more resemblance to the similarly gripping, dark early
work of bands like the Cocteau Twins and the Cure than to the later fusions of music that would come to characterize
the duo's sound, Dead Can Dance is as goth as it gets in many places".[2]

Album cover
The album cover includes a photo of a piece of artwork from Papua New Guinea on the left side,[3] and on the right, the
Greek characters "ΔΞΛΔ CΛΝ ΔΛΝCΞ", which aimed to visually resemble the title "DEAD CAN DANCE".

Release
The album was released by 4AD on 27 February 1984. Some editions included Dead Can Dance's next release, the EP
Garden of the Arcane Delights, added onto the end of the album.

Reception
In its retrospective review, AllMusic wrote that, with the album,
Professional ratings
"Perry and Gerrard created a striking, dour landmark in early-
'80s atmospherics".[2] Review scores
Source Rating
Touring AllMusic [2]

The band's touring was limited to Europe during this period.[4]

Track listing
Side A
No. Title Length
1. "The Fatal Impact" 3:21
2. "The Trial" 3:42
3. "Frontier" 3:13
4. "Fortune" 3:47
5. "Ocean" 3:21
Side B
No. Title Length
1. "East of Eden" 3:23
2. "Threshold" 3:34
3. "A Passage in Time" 4:03
4. "Wild in the Woods" 3:46
5. "Musica Eternal" 3:51

Release history
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Country Date
Australia 27 February 1984
United States 22 March 1994

Personnel
Personnel adapted from Dead Can Dance liner notes.[5]

Dead Can Dance

Lisa Gerrard
Brendan Perry
James Pinker
Scott Roger
Peter Ulrich

Production

John Fryer – production

References
1. Donna Weston; Andy Bennett (2014). Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=gcXoBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA77). Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 9781317546665.
2. Raggett, Ned. "Dead Can Dance – Dead Can Dance : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards : AllMusic" (http://www.all
music.com/album/dead-can-dance-mw0000821472). AllMusic. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
3. "deadcan-dance.com" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130927123918/http://www.dead-can-dance.com/disco/dcd/d
cd/deadcandance.htm). dead-can-dance.com. Archived from the original (http://www.dead-can-dance.com/disco/d
cd/dcd/deadcandance.htm) on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
4. http://www.deadcandance.info/datesonly.html
5. http://www.discogs.com/Dead-Can-Dance-Dead-Can-Dance/release/1980651

External links
Dead Can Dance at the band's official website (http://www.dead-can-dance.com/disco/dcd/dcd/deadcandance.ht
m)
Dead Can Dance (https://www.discogs.com/master/14637) at Discogs (list of releases)
Dead Can Dance (https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/53a1670f-ec24-3d8d-a73a-2bd40225dcdf) at
MusicBrainz (list of releases)

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This page was last edited on 20 July 2019, at 06:29 (UTC).

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