"The great mass play a waiting game, embalmed, crippled, dying in fear of pain."
The career trajectory and creative evolution of Dead Can Dance is quite amazing given the band's humble beginnings: an Australian Punk band called The Marching Girls who couldn't land a recording contract. Brendan Perry eventually quit this band to pursue a more experimental musical muse, which ultimately resulted in the formation of Dead Can Dance with Lisa Gerrard in 1981. Early on, they were a four piece Goth-Industrial outfit with a slightly more exotic sound than most of their peers. However, over the course of the next 20 years, Dead Can Dance would prove to be one of the most singular and timeless bands of the Post-Punk era, integrating Gregorian chant, African percussion, Eastern Folk idioms, and Classical influences such as Arvo Part into their musical palette. The box set 1981-1998 attempts the impossible task of summarizing Dead Can Dance's discography, and while each of their original eight albums is represented by several songs, these, without exception, are better heard in their original contexts. What makes this box set worthwhile for those already familiar with the band's work are the rarities, which, though not plentiful, are quite desirable. Chief among these is a complete John Peel session recorded in 1983, a year before releasing their first LP for 4AD. Even at this early stage in the band's development, Lisa Gerrard's peerless alto and Brendan Perry's strangely Sinatra-esque baritone sound transcendent and creatively restless. Needless to say, this is absolutely essential listening.
