GARDEN OF THE ARCANE DELIGHTS

Garden of the Arcane Delights is an EP released by Dead Can Dance in 1984. This EP was released after the debut album and shows some improvement over that album. If you already got the debut album on CD you won´t need to use your time searching for this rare EP as the four tracks are included on the CD version of the debut.

Dead Can Dance is a two piece band that consist of Brendan Perry on vocals and guitar and Lisa Gerrard on vocals. The rest of the musicians are hired help. The style they played on the debut album and on this EP is dark early eighties rock in the vein of Fields of the Nephilim, Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus but with an ethnic twist as Lisa Gerrard´s vocal style is very influenced by middle eastern techniques.

There are four songs on Garden of the Arcane Delights and they are all very good but I especially enjoy In Power We Entrust The Love Advocated and The Arcane where Brendan Perry sings lead vocals. These two songs deserve a 4 star rating but the more ethnic sounding Carnival Of Light and Flowers Of The Sea do drag this down to a 3 star rating from me. This is only because I´m not that excited about the ethnic part of Dead Can Dance sound though. Like on the debut the drums are played by a drum machine which is an aquired taste, but it´s allright IMO.

The sound quality is just a notch better than on the debut which means that it´s still not very good.

Garden of the Arcane Delights is a really enjoyable EP that is very recommendable if you like dark early eighties rock.