Born out of Australia’s post-punk independent band movement, this neoclassical duo were swiftly signed to 4AD in the 80s where, along with labelmates Cocteau Twins, they unwittingly found themselves lumped in with the burgeoning goth scene. Four decades on, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry’s groundbreaking music has inspired a new generation of ethereal and otherworldly progressive acts, as well as a certain Mr Wilson. So now we have to ask: how prog are Dead Can Dance?

Words: Dave Everley

VINCENT/DALLE/AVALON

Lisa Gerrard frequently uses the word “arrogant” in conjunction with Dead Can Dance, the band she formed with longtime musical partner Brendan Perry in 1981. “We had this arrogant belief that what we were doing was important,” she says at one point.

“We never believed it couldn’t be something amazing. That was never a consideration.” Later, she puts it even more pithily: “We both had this extraordinary arrogance.”

Arrogant is perhaps overstating it, from an outside perspective at least. But the music Dead Can Dance have made over four decades undeniably has an elevated otherworldliness to it. Their songs are impossible to pin down: the cavernous post-punk of their early years swiftly gave way to a sound that has drawn from multiple places and cultures, from traditional Mediterranean music to medieval.

Their protean approach has influenced some of progressive music’s key figures. Steven Wilson has cited Dead Can Dance as a formative inspiration – he and sometime collaborator Tim Bowness sampled DCD’s Song Of Sophia on the track Simple from No-Man’s 1994 album Flowermouth, while Wilson has long expressed an interest in collaborating with Gerrard. More recently, DCD’s imprint is evident in the transcendental musical journeys of Wardruna, Heilung and Russian dark-folk mystics Theodor Bastard.