Dead Can Dance - S/d

you're welcome. you're right, I adore that title, too. and watch until you see its cover.. : )

if goth's the style you prefer, I think you will gonna like the new album, then. long-time fans often get to have jaded ears, so.. : )

so there are yet two albums I haven't mentioned. Dead Can Dance (1984) is also unto itself, for it being very much post-punkish as rhythm section, guitars etc. go. their only 'rock' album, if you will. the band were never satisfied with its sound/production, though.
and then there's The Serpent's Egg (1988), a very nice album, which is stylistically the exact link between its predecessor (Within the Realm..) and its successor (Aion).

ah - I was almost forgetting: in 2005 they attempted a reunion first time around with a world tour that spawned some new tracks (two conflued into Perry's aforementioned Ark album) and a host of double live albums produced by theshow.com - there are some dozen of them, plus 'Selections from Europe' and 'Selections from North America'. they're a bit harder to find than the official albums on 4AD, but they are worth finding them out. the tracklist is interesting and spanning wide, mostly because it's peppered with new/unreleased/solo-careers songs, and they remain impressive live (although these days they sadly rely much more on samples than live period instruments as was the case back when).

the official albums have all been lovingly remastered some years ago, get the remasters over the original CDs by all means (sound quality, 4AD-designed booklet with lyrics and period photographs).
On their official site (deadcandance.com) you can see the covers and I believe they stream the whole discography, too.

lastly, they also have one official video out to date - the DVD to the Toward the Within tour/live album. it's the concert (not entire, but cherry-picked enough) peppered with interviews both with Gerrard and Perry. as with its live album counterpart, it's absolutely indispensable. one critique you could make is that the studio albums feel a bit clinical: the additional musicians and instrumental improvisations on stage dispense with that and the music truly gets a-live.

Alternately, pick up "Wake," the two-disc compilation that covers everything except the 2005 live albums and the new 2012 album... it's a solid representation. A Passage in Time is another comp, but it leans too heavily on Aion and the Serpent's Egg.

I'm a total DCD newbie. I've only heard Spleen and Ideal, but I've been playing it nonstop since i got it a few weeks ago. Particularly the second half, where the same synth cymbal noise starts to make frequent appearances in multiple songs.

xxpost - ah, yes - 'Wake' is right on. having everything by them, of course I forgot about that one.

And the new album has two or three of their best songs ever, so it's worth your time. Return of the She-King is just out of this world. Wish they would release a live album from the 2012/2013 tour.

if you like Rimbaud, search the late Hector Zazou's 'Sahara Blue' disc from 1992. it sets to music Rimbaud's poems and texts (chiefly in English translations, but also in their original French, and Hebrew too) sung and performed by an international all-star (well, art-rock all-star) line-up which is not a mess, but one of the most impressive albums of the '90s (as other Zazou projects of the same kind are, really). among Bill Laswell, Khaled, Sylvian/Sakamoto, Patti Smith and Gerard Depardieu, Dead Can Dance perform two songs/poems - both being among the best things they ever did. the Perry-sung track is, as the album's title suggests, North African desert soundscapes + (obviously, given the subject) European/French/Belgian melancholy/debauchment. Gerrard's piece, on the other hand, is very much goth updated, seeing as she sings about Ophelia drowning (in English, which is a rarity for her singing tyle) amongst electronic waters.

actually, there is a lone album of theirs in my mentions which I did not describe in a nutshell for you: Into the Labyrinth (1993). it's many people's fav DCD. it's a beautiful distillation of every influence they show and run with across their careers: goth, Gaelic, aboriginal, polyrhythmic stuff. it's exceptionally strong as songs, atmospheres, production, and vocal delivery go, and spawned many of their concert staples from then on. it was my way in with them, they kind of made a bigger splash with this one, their first getting distributed in America, too. (I'm sure there are hard-line goths somewhere saying they sold out to America with this one; it goes with the territory - pun not intended.) the Lisa stuff especially has a forceful, waking-dream esoteric quality while being grounded by hypnotic polyrhythms. on the Brendan front, everyone loves what he did there with a harrowing Brecht poem about iniquity throughout history ('How Fortunate the Man with None') - never has nihilism been so close to piety.

I sound so fan-ish, and they're not even my favourite band : )

I love Kiko off the new one so much. Some of the stuff on there is just too grandiose for me in a blockbuster soundtrack way, but the second half of that one song is transcendent. Children Of The Sun is good too, the optimism of that song makes a nice antidote to listening to the Swans album too much.

I like Kiko well enough, but more in theory than in practice - the problem I have with them as they stand now, is they sound stiff and unmovable, both on record and live. they should get out more, metaphorically speaking. I agree that Children of the Sun (and All in Good Time) is one of their best. some people have criticised the simplicity of the lyrics, but I love it.

yes, the second half of Kiko is their only link to the previous album. I wish it sounded a bit more freewheeling, though. then again, you could always spot the sampled seams on their later records, which did not detract from their greatness.

Happily, I found Spleen and Ideal on vinyl day before yesterday. I'M IN LOVE.

lol there is a version of "ubiquitous mr lovegrove" on youtube that is just clips from darren aronofsky's the fountain

https://eleusis2021.eu/portfolio-posts/dead-can-dance-eleusis/?lang=en

oh, and Eleusis has won the bid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusis -> "On 11 November 2016 Eleusis was named the European Capital of Culture for 2021."

I did not expect to see this today:

http://figureskatersonline.com/news/2018/08/28/at-age-28-alex-johnson-is-set-to-make-his-grand-prix-debut/

My short program is to “Song of the Stars” by Dead Can Dance. I actually choreographed it myself. Initially I didn’t want to, because I love working with other choreographers, but Page [Lipe, my coach] thought it would be a great challenge for me. It has a modern yet tribal feel to it.

in unrelated news, Lisa Gerrard does vocals on four tracks here, released back in May of this year:

https://www.discogs.com/The-Mystery-Of-The-Bulgarian-Voices-Featuring-Lisa-Gerrard-BooCheeMish/release/12050063

hope they share some info about their new album soon, apparently it was mixed in April

x-post. Just posted about the Bulgarian Choir album on their thread.