Spleen and Ideal [Re-Mastered]

Dead Can Dance - Spleen and Ideal [Re-Mastered]

Spleen and Ideal [Re-Mastered]
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CD Details

Artist: Dead Can Dance
Edition: Music CD
Format: Hybrid SACD, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2008-07-22
Music Label: 4ad Records
Soundtracks:
  1. De Profundis (Out Of The Depths Of Sorrow)
  2. Ascension
  3. Circumradiant Dawn
  4. The Cardinal Sin
  5. Mesmerism
  6. Enigma Of The Absolute
  7. Advent
  8. Avatar
  9. Indoctrination (A Design For Living)

Music reviews of Spleen and Ideal [Re-Mastered]

Music Review: Dark, deep music for the ultra-patient
Rating: 5 Stars

Often acclaimed as their best album, 1985's "Spleen and Ideal" (the title coming from Charles Baudelaire) saw Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry develop one of the most enchanting and unique sounds ever to be put before the modern music world.

Though there are traces of the drum machines found on their debut, otherwise the instrumentation of "Spleen and Ideal" is entirely acoustic and horns have a prominent part, so much so that often "Spleen and Ideal" reminds one of funk slowed down to 10 beats per minute. The key thing is that this slowness, whilst it makes the music have little content at first listen, actually adds to the emotion and makes Brendan Perry's voice - which could easily be used for awful soul-pop in the vein of Joe Cocker - sound really passionate and so deeply melodic that it really hits your heart just as much Lisa's siren-like wail that actually is on "Mesmerism" very close to Liz Fraser.

The real gems that make "Spleen and Ideal" a remarkable album, however, are the first three tracks. "De Profundis" even features Andrew Hutton as Boy soprano and the incomprehensible yet twinkling vocals of Lisa Gerrard really cry despair. "Circumradiant Dawn" shows Lisa singing with even more passion, whilst the mainly instrumental "Ascension" features some of the most powerful, gut-wrenching, soulful horns you will ever hear.

After this, "Spleen and Ideal" become a little less inaccessible, but its slow, soulful passion remains a taste very difficult to acquire. Perry's beautiful voice on "The Cardinal Sin", "Enigma of the Absolute" and "Advent" perfectly matches the despairing lyrics he was to perfect on their next album Within the Realm of a Dying Sun. "Mesmerism" reminds one of another mystical masterpiece released a mere few months previously in Kate Bush's Hounds of Love but is more gorgeous and sensual than Bush ever was. "Advent" is as near to pop as Dead Can Dance were ever to be, but it is not easy to imagine the lyrics Perry sings on commercial radio.

"Avatar" makes for further Kate Bush comparisons with its joyful, mystical mood, but Lisa's voice is incredibly entrancing when you listen carefully and more upfront than on any other Dead Can Dance piece. Closer "Indoctrination (A Design for Living)" is really sedate, dark, yet totally danceable and really shows to great effect how people doom themselves to loss of freedom in its lyrics.

All in all, "Spleen and Ideal" can seem nothing on first listen but it is a truly beautiful and emotional work if you - unlike most listeners - manage to acquire a taste for it. Alternately despairing and ecstatically joyful, it was the true beginning of one of the most unique bands of at least the part forty years.

Description of Spleen and Ideal [Re-Mastered]

The primarily experimental structure of their second album, released in 1986, dispelled any notion that the band deserved the post-Gothic label slapped on them by the music press. "Spleen And Ideal" defined a new richness of unification between voice and music, lyrics and structure.

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