Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Lisa Gerrard - The Mirror Pool (1995)

All of my readers should already have all of Dead Can Dance's releases, so here's Lisa Gerrard's first solo album which really just sounds like another Dead Can Dance Record. My recent musical exploration has taken me to look into solo works of artists that I like (Paul Westerberg, Bob Mould, Brendan Perry, Lisa Gerrard, Sisqo, etc).

The melodic possibilities of harmonic minor and its modes are explored in fascinating detail here. The songs are less "song-like" than a lot of Dead Can Dance material and function more as melodic adventures over droning backgrounds. I wonder how much of this is improvised, and I wonder how many cues Lisa took from Kind of Blue and how many she took from Indian classical music. That said, shit still sounds medieval as fuck, so blast this Lisa Gerrard album and this youtube video simultaneously and enjoy the best that life has to offer.

3 comments:

Todd said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhtIydTmOVU

RSS said...

Nice choice. I almost turned into a puddle in my chair the first time I heard "Sanvean" and her take on the Bach piece is otherworldly. I could never get into Silver Tree (or any other of her or B. Perry's solo works) like I did this one.

Todd said...

Agreed; a lot of her more ambient stuff is pretty cool, but nothing that I've given a lot of repeat listens.