Magic From a Wizard's Brew

By Guy Garcia

Despite its macabre name, Dead Can Dance is not a satanic disco band. And while there is plenty of dark magic on Into the Labyrinth, there are no banshee vocals or pounding beats. Instead, Dead Can Dance taps the ecstatic power of Middle Eastern devotional music, Gregorian chant and Celtic canticle to forge a mesmerizing sound that seems to transcend centuries and cultures. Pulsing with primal rhythms, layered keyboards and ululating vocals, this is World Beat music with a mystical edge.

Dead Can Dance consists of Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, who teamed up 12 years and six albums ago. Theirs is an unusual collaboration. Perry lives in Ireland, Gerrard in Australia; the two trade letters and tapes before going into the studio. "We make records because we still have a lot of demons to exorcise," explains Perry. On The Wind That Shakes the Barley, an 18th century Irish song written to commemorate an uprising against the British, Gerrard's echoing a cappella is like a cold wind blowing over unmarked graves. Yulunga (Spirit Dance) begins with ominous droning and then, adding drums, shakers and Gerrard's serpentine singing, builds until its swirling patterns evoke the hypnotic gyrations of a belly dancer. The North African mood of The Spider's Stratagem is embellished by sinuous webs of violins, drifting voices and pattering percussion.

Perry and Gerrard decided to call their duo Dead Can Dance when they saw a ritual mask from New Guinea. Says Perry: "The mask, though once a living part of a tree, is dead. Nevertheless, it has, through the artistry of its maker, been imbued with a life force of its own." Into the Labyrinth does not always carry so powerful a thrust, but its exotic elements fuse and cast a spell of breathless gravity.