Flowers Of The Sea
The song taken from the 1984 E.P. 'Garden Of The Arcane Delights' released on the 4AD Record Label. It was one of the few they released being primarily known for their album releases. Their eponymous album being released the same year as this E.P.
The tracklisting for the E.P. is:
- Carnival Of Lights
- In Power We Entrust The Love Advocated
- The Arcane
- Flowers Of The Sea
Little Bands Scene
Both Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry met whilst in the Melbourne 'Little Bands' scene which kicked off in the late '70 to early '80's. It was set up by post punk band The Primitive Calculators and was based more on artistic impression rather than making the big time. Many of the bands in the 'collective' were fairly short lived, but they played the pubs and clubs in the city back in the day. You can check out more about this post punk experimental movement at punkjourney.com
Marching Girls On Microfilm
Both had previously been involved in bands prior to Dead Can Dance. Brendan Perry was originally born in London's East End but moved to Auckland in the early part of the '70's and became involved in the New Zealand Punk scene with a band originally called 'The Scavengers', like all good punk bands of the day no-one actually used their own name and Perry took on the name 'Ronnie Recent'. Check out the video interview with Perry describing the punk scene in N.Z. at the time here on New Zealand Music Series 'Give It A Whirl'.
The band later relocated to Australia and changed their name to 'The Marching Girls'.
Lisa Gerrard was born in Melbourne, she grew up with music from an early age being born in an area of the city which had a large multicultural population, therefore had early exposure to more 'Mediterranean' styles of music (which features heavily in some of their later material), she was involved with an early post punk band 'Microfilm'.
London, 4AD And Success
After their meeting in 'The Little Bands Scene' they relocated to London after forming Dead Can Dance in 1981 and were signed by 4AD, perhaps some similarities in their earlier work with The Cocteau Twins, either way the label were obviously way ahead of the game in spotting talent. The band seemed to have been lumped in with the early U.K. 'Goth' scene, but I personally wouldn't like to have pigeon-holed their music styles and influences as they go way beyond the 'Goth' tag.
The Future Sound Of...
They went on to score 8 albums on the 4AD Label, Gerrard also became involved in acting as well as singing. Her voice in the track 'Dawn Of The Iconoclast' being sampled by 'The Future Sound Of London'.
You can visit their website which has details of their Tour Dates. And also catch the song Mushin on there too....they have still got it, what a cool track!
Big Thanks
For the Featured Image for this post I am really chuffed to be able to post by 'kind permission' someone's awesome artistic talents, it fits in so well as the artist is in Australia, a big clap 👏 to [email protected]. Please visit her site to check out her her wonderful artwork.