AAAC - 22/11/19 - Dead Can Dance - Toward the within

This is a strange group as I like and dislike their stuff with equal measure but this album is just fantastic.

One of the rare albums where I can listen to and enjoy every track. Also a group that are better live than their studio albums.

The ‘Persian love song’ is one of the most hauntingly fantastic songs I’ve heard.

5 Likes

i’ll give this a go, some of their stuff is great as you say…

Great live

TIDAL Linky:

I have been a huge Dead Can Dance fan since their first LP came out. I’ve lost count of how many times I have seen them live (We saw them twice in Lisbon in June this year). IIRC I left @Wayward in charge of my room at the 2013 or 2014 Scalford listening to this very LP while I went to the loo and grabbed a pint.

This LP is great although it documents a tour that I thought was weak compared to previous efforts. The live DVD that accompanies this has some of the most ludicrously pretentious and pompous interviews you’ll ever hear. They are soooo awful they are almost good.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this might appeal to our Strayan prog-botherer, although he might hate it on grounds that Lisa Gerrard is Strayan who lives in Moe in Victoria.

Andrew Claxton, who played keyboards and percussion on at least some of this, and who toured with Dead Can Dance, was my niece’s piano teacher. He still teaches https://www.oxfordschoolofmusic.org.uk/andrew.html.

VB

I’m also very much a love a couple of their LP’s, meh to the rest kind of guy, so looking forward to seeing where this fits.

I love this album- the vinyl pressing is absolutely outstanding. I also admire Dead Can Dance’s ability to dick about with their loyal fanbase. This tour was undertaken notionally to support the release of Into the Labyrinth. Rakim the opening track on this album wasn’t on that album. In fact it wasn’t on any of their albums and wasn’t played again by them for another year.

We saw every tour apart from the tour in support of the first LP. As the tours went on the setlists contained more and more songs that were never released. Fully half the songs I saw them play over 4 or 5 shows on the Aion tour never saw release.

I’m out.

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It’ll be absolutely flying in the face of his usual standards if he doesn’t vent hatred all over it.

It’s got their (her) version of The Wind That Shakes The Barley on it. Stopped me in my tracks in the AudioNote room at Windsor a year or so ago.

VB

There is a studio version on ‘Into The Labyrinth’ that is little short of astonishing.

Álan seems to like this sort of thing, so I have actively avoided it.
For the benefit of others who haven’t heard it, I’ll take one for the team :+1:

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I’ll bet you were pre-lubed just on the off-chance. It is Friday after all.

Lube will have to wait. Night shifts beckon first :disappointed:

Haven’t listened to Dead Can Dance in years, I’ve got their first two 4AD albums and saw them live quite a few times in the early 80’s, Brixton with Xmal Deutshland and The Box springs to mind.

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That Brixton gig was about 1986 wasn’t it? I attended as many Xmal Deutschland gigs as possible because of this lady:

image

Anja Huwe, no photo I’ve seen does justice to her ‘presence’ on stage.

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I think it was 83 or 84, but I can’t remember. I think I’d lost interest by 86 but it could have been. It was at the old roller disco that later became The Fridge.

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You are right, it must have been earlier because we were still at school for the DCD/XD gigs. Probably 1984 at the Ace.

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Yes Brixton Ace. Well remembered :+1: