Track Listing

1. Nierika
2. Song of the Stars
3. Indus
4. Song of the Dispossessed
5. Dedicacé Outò - Dead Can Dance, Perry, Brendan
6. The Snake and the Moon
7. Song of the Nile
8. Devorzhum

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38053 in Music
• Published on: 1996
• Released on: 1996-06-25
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Out of print in the U.S.! Import pressing of this 1996 album, the final release from one of the 4AD label's most popular and influential bands. At the core of Dead Can Dance is guitarist Brendan Perry and vocalist Lisa Gerard, who created a body of work that remains invigorating and uniquely their own. Eight tracks. 4AD.

Amazon.com
Listening to Dead Can Dance is a transcendental experience. Enriched with dedications to the living Gaia, their creations subsist in natural and other worldly realms. Initially crafting songs which augmented their Australian roots with Gothic and Renaissance traditions, the group have since grown to encompass a hybrid of global sounds. On Spiritchaser the enchanted souls of founding members Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard shine in this, their most ethereal LP to date. Whereas earlier endeavors succumbed to genres grounded in eras of the past and non-Western present, it's immediately apparent that this album has loftier aspirations. Hypnotically threaded with traditional and electronic instruments, the exorcism of each song touches upon the universal essence beyond. While Gerrard's heavenly vocals are used primarily for instrumental effect, Perry's fertile lyricism both compliments her efforts and expresses the spiritual associations related to the album's title and meaning. Intrinsically delivered with shamanistic connectivity, the sensations ritualize the modern mortal. --Lucas Hilbert

Customer Reviews

Conjure the Beauty
Dead Can Dance is one of my favorite bands in the world, and this CD is one of the reasons why they are. Haunting, beautiful, and moving, they take me on a musical journey no matter where I am or what I am doing. Their magic is very rare, and it is something that only some musicians manage to conjure. Dead Can Dance is one of those bands. If you like Dead Can Dance and do not have this CD...Pick it up...it won't disappoint.

The best album yet in my eyes
This is by far in my opinion the best album DCD has put out. I heard that it's out of print, but I could be wrong. If so I wouldn't waste time not buying it. I think anyone who likes DCD would be extremely satisfied with this piece of work. The sound is similar to the other albums, but much more more dynamic, dark, etheric sounding, yet calmer at the same time. Great for those who are really into trance music!

A mediocre end to a great group
Spiritchaser is Dead Can Dance's seventh and last studio album, and sees them forging deeper into realms of ethnic music. Unfortunately, this is also their least successful album musically, and is a bad place for anyone unfamiliar with the group to start their explorations.

One criticism leveled at recent prior albums by the group was that the duo of Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard appeared to be getting more and more disconnected from one another musically, with albums featuring a succession of "his" and "her" songs. The two appear to be attempting to rectify that failing throughout this album, with more integrated vocals and more of a group feel throughout. There is a greater emphasis on percussion and drumming, as well as the reintroduction of some electric guitar, mostly unheard on the duo's albums since their second album some 11 years earlier.

Alas, most of the percussion is uninspired, and although several songs begin with promise, almost all outstay their welcome: the opening track, Nierika, ultimately becomes repetitive and boring, the exciting opening four minutes of Song of the Stars (featuring Brendan reading an Iroquois invocation over drones and native drumming), gives way to an interminable six more minutes of guitar noodling and chanting, the initially catchy The Snake and The Moon devolves into repetitive vocal refrains, and even the addition of gamelan to the instrumentation of the eight minute long Song of the Nile can't save it from tedium. Worst of all is Brendan's cringe-inducing stab at Caribbean music in Song of the Dispossessed; one keeps waiting for him to burst out in a chorus of "Day-O!"

Along with the beginning of Song of the Stars, two tracks save this album from wretchedness: the middle eastern flavored song Indus, which at over nine minutes is a bit long, but Lisa's vivid singing carries the listener along, and the absolutely gorgeous closing track by Lisa, Devorzhum. This wordless song has been used in at least two movies, and it's easy to see why. Lisa's singing is at its sweetest and most achingly beautiful here, and drifts atop a layer of drones and gentle guitar strings. By itself this song almost justifies the purchase of the album.

An instrumental outtake from the Spiritchaser recording sessions, Sambatiki, was released as part of the 1996 concert tour souvenir book, and also appears on the DCD box set. It features the same drumming, twangy electric guitar and ethnic instrumentation as much of the rest of the album, but somehow works better than most tracks that unfortunately made it on to the final release.

For those just beginning to explore Dead Can Dance, move on now and come back to this album later if you know you love the group and have to have everything they ever produced. A better starting point for beginners would be the live album Toward the Within, the early collection A Passage In Time, which features their pre-1990 work, or the career spanning two disc retrospective, Wake, though this last has some rather odd choices in the track listing.