- Dionysus is the ninth studio album and the first new release in six years for Dead Can Dance. You might want to lump them into, variously, the post-punk, darkwave, arty or goth-rock genres. However the fact remains, since 1981, the creative team of Brenda Perry and Lisa Gerard have been inspiring musical explorers, engaging in rich and often spiritual meanderings through both ancient and modern communal celebrations of mythology and folklore.
Dionysus is a collection in two acts subdivided into seven movements in oratorio form, referencing the different aspects of the myths and symbolism that surround the Greek god Dionysus, creator of viticulture, god of the harvest, ritual ecstasy, the underworld and wanton, celebratory, drunken excess. Over time worshippers developed this celebration of drunken revelry into a cult that’s still shrouded in mystery to this day.
Brendan Perry delivers his wide ranging instrumental collection to the fore, as well as his voice to most of this album. It’s hard to discern Lisa Gerard’s other-worldly and mostly wordless vocals on Dionysus but you can still sense the combined sonic artistry of this inspired duo, maintaining the cinematic and expansive sound architecture much loved by fans since their early days and from their various associations with the stable of artists on the 4AD label.
Field recordings of birds, a Swiss goatherd, New Zealand bees and Balkan chants all add to the implied diversity of sound that is the ‘natural music’ all around us. Released on the second of November, Mexico’s dais Del los muertos (Day of the Dead) is referenced and starkly evident on what is their most colourful cover artwork to date. A richly coloured beaded mask of the Huichol from Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains linking, the communal celebrations and rituals, separated by millennia.
Act II - The Mountain, officially the single for Dionysus, commences with a brooding drone addition of Celtic bagpipe, Qanun and the Daf draw in the call and response vocals of Brendan Perry & Lisa Gerard. The following tracks – The Invocation and The Forest are both peppered with some of The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices women’s choir Lisa Gerard recorded some material with on the album BooCheeMish released earlier this year.
It would be just rude or perhaps too glib to label this latest work from Dead Can Dance as more of the same from the long running musical partnership. If you've absorbed the solo works and collaborations the pair have lived out since their last studio album Anastasis in 2008, you'll recognise all have combined in this evolution of the heady melange that is their world. One footnote however, at just thirty-six minutes in duration, this new piece of their world doesn’t quiet quench a fan’s musical thirst!
- Rick Heritage.