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Rating: In the realm of the dying sun, the Apollonian and the Dionysian meet, embrace, and soar on golden wings in a supernatural, metaphysical flight.
The Anglo-Australian duo Dead Can Dance, upon reaching their third full-length record, achieve their personal artistic pinnacle, supported by an orchestra of strings, winds, and percussion that bolster the supernatural feats of Lisa Gerrard's aerial and luminous vocals and the grave and solemn vocal timbre of a Brendan Perry drunk on melancholy.
An ensemble radiating atmospheres from distant and arcane epochs, a sacred and metaphysical journey above all, woven with the threads of decadence and disorientation, a mournful wail echoing among ruins of civilizations and ancient myths, melancholic and nocturnal among heroes forgotten by history. "Anywhere Out Of The World" marks the beginning of the journey in the twilight’s shadow, a contemplative and dark electroacoustic mantra forged in eternity with floating vertiginous melodies, epic organ-like sidereal inserts, and the sacred and afflicted singing of Perry, transfigured among austere Olympian sculptures eroded by time. The instrumental "Windfall" radiates with beauty and melancholic grace compositions for strings and winds, gray yet vital and trembling landscapes, night chills, and twilight melodic drapes splendidly support "In The Wake Of Adversity", a shadowy danse macabre still submerged by Perry's gloomy vocal mood, an uncanny and archaic dance of shadows. Then it’s the turn of the wonderful mysticisms of "Xavier" to close the part of the journey entrusted to Brendan Perry’s imperious vocals, inspired, solemn, shamanic; ethereal orchestral sound charms tower and rise unchallenged among the dark rivulets of melodies drunk on decadence, the subdued singing occasionally rises and articulates words bristling with sadness.
Introduced by triumphant brass inserts, "Dawn Of The Iconoclast" bursts forth proudly and majestically, Gerrard’s vocals lost in emptiness send shivers down the spine, her Hecate’s chant soars among droning walls of sound that dissolve to flow into Mediterranean sound phrases, the initial phrases of "Cantara," a breathless rush through golden fields and metaphysical temples, the break-in of percussion and Gerrard's otherworldly vocal experiments close the circle, in a sonorous embrace consumed on shrouds covered with white roses. "Summoning Of The Muse" adheres to crystalline and dreamlike codes of beauty, the poignant auroral singing of Lisa Gerrard towers amidst the wonderful and dark melodies of the strings, ancient ruins carved in immense starry skies irradiated with light, the subsequent "Persephone (The Gathering Of Flowers)" radiates somberness and sacred solemnity, genuflected on altars of ancestral deities, vocals of disarming, supernatural beauty, the dark compositions for strings and winds raise golden sound barriers repeatedly brought down by Gerrard’s mesmerizing voice until the end, beyond the natural, anywhere out of the world.
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