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.

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Dead Can Dance - Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (1987)

I think that it's impossible to describe Dead Can Dance's music without sounding like some Enya-ass Putumayo mom bullshit. Because yeah they totally combine aspects of wide varieties of "world music" with Medieval European folk melodies! And it all kind of comes together in a Gothish post-punk way that will tickle your inner fat Wiccan girl!

But what matters is that these melodies are fucking gorgeous. My stomach hurts when I listen to this band because it's so, so beautiful. See, that's an interesting thing about certain kinds of transcendent beauty. No matter how much I listen to Dead Can Dance, there is always something not quite obtainable about the experience that fills me with longing. My own existence lacks in comparison to the music, but I can't figure out what I'm missing. Now imagine that I wrote the previous few sentences about Heather Graham.

Lisa Gerrard's powerful, powerful, powerful and haunting voice takes over for the second half of this record, existing over layers of percussion and counterpoint. These sounds are unmistakably deep, dark purple in my head, and I feel like I'm collapsing into an endless pit of color and velvet texture as I listen. The fullness of the tones and instrumentation, the elegance of the voice-leading and arrangement, and the expressiveness of the vocal performances make this required listening for anyone who has considered liking music.

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