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Dead Can Dance - Into The Labyrinth CD (album) cover

INTO THE LABYRINTH

Dead Can Dance

 

Prog Folk

4.00 | 163 ratings

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TCat
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
5 stars With this album, we follow Dead Can Dance into their most mature and developed music. All the brightness that was evident on "Aion" is now gone again. The darkness has returned to this traditional sounding music. The album starts off beautifully with the amazing "Yulunga (Spirit Dance)". Words cannot describe this gorgeous piece of art. Word of advice: put on your headphones when listening to this, turn the volume up, stop doing anything else you are doing and find yourself transported to some other place beyond description. Simply amazing. Right away, you can hear how much more focused everything is on this album. That might be because Gerrard and Perry are doing everything themselves....there are no other musicians (not even guests) on this one, and what results is a beautiful album. The music throughout simply sounds focused and complete. Everything that has been lacking on previous albums is fixed and present on this one. This continues throughout the album. The second track is one that most people should recognize as it was played quite a lot on college radio stations throughout America. Nothing else like this existed back in the early 90s. The voice sounds like Jim Morrison, yet the music sounds nothing like The Doors. The third track is a beautiful vocalization accapella style (with reverb) of a traditional song sung by Lisa in English (!). As the last note fades from this song, the instrumentals start for the next song which leads into vocals by Perry this time. The instrumentals are so much better utilized on this song then what has been utilized by songs led by Perry in the past, even his singing is more soulful especially as it approaches the middle of the piece. There is brightness in the instrumentals here representing the carnival music which is supposed to be happy but there is an underlying doom to the instrumentals also so that you know that all is not well, that we all should be sad that this is the last time the carnival will ever come to this town. There are then two short tracks, one a chant, the other a dance. These tracks actually work well here to balance out the middle part of the album as we go "Towards the Within" which is another amazing track with both Gerrard and Perry singing along with some amazing percussion and interplay amongst instruments. This track harkens back to the 1st track with the same style. The vocals are wordless but the percussion and the mode of the key that the piece is in almost makes it sound like a mix between Native American and Far Eastern traditions. Another amazing track that transports you to another place. The album continues with more amazing tracks as it continues on taking you along on it's journey to far off lands and traditions. It brings you back home on the last track, a long litany sung by Perry in which he seems to remind us that there is poverty throughout the world along with beauty and that we should remember that the people that bring beauty, tradition, and love to the world are the people that have so little, hence "How Fotunate the Man with None". With many prog elements mixed in with world wide traditions, this album should appeal to those people with an open mind to hearing the beauty in different cultures. To tell the truth, the first few times I listened to this album, I wasn't quite so sold on it. Now that I am familiar with the music, I have been able to concentrate on the beauty and complexity of it all. Give this one a chance and listen closely to it. This is an album that should be important to anyone interested in exploring music which should describe most of us prog-heads. Beautiful, well executed, excellent production, amazing vocals and astounding instrumentation make this a solid 5 star must have album.
TCat | 5/5 |

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