Dead Can Dance ‎– Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun

I’m sure I’m not the only fan that at the start saw DCD as Lisa Gerard and that bloke. History has shown this analysis was kinda correct as Lisa went on to become an award winning film soundtrack composer and Brendan Perry, well, didn’t. However it was on this LP where Bren fulfilled the potential he showed on their previous two albums. Although the LP for many, including me, is famous for being the source of the sample for Future Sound Of London’s biggest hit Papua New Guinea, it is on the tsunami of a song Xavier where Bren’s sub Matt Munro baritone swept me away. Ever since that song and that LP I’ve been very much Team Bren. Well most of the time.

This version is the best sounding LP of my entire collection. Zero surface noise, no pops of any kind. Album is a masterpiece of course.

Nothing beats "Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun" and "Spleen And Ideal".

to me one of the best and most atmospheric albums ever made; intense, haunting and beautiful

Purely magical. Very intense music. Music that transports you. And timeless. A theatrical quality.

Mind and ear music if there ever was. Timeless, eerie, transcendent music made by a band that carved a niche in their genre others dear tread. DCD is mature, serious and music created for those welcoming a musical world beyond processed contemporary detritus of the mindless pop music idiom. Exemplary release where the vocals are as poetic as the instrumental support.

Dead Can Dance succeeded in their career to create timeless music that will never suffer the aging of time. I own their entire discography and in my opinion this album is the perfect blend of their umbratile art, where the earlier post-wave moods are perfectly in harmony with the latter ethnic flavors. "Persephone", the closing track, is probably the peak of the entire album, a stunning piece of music that sounds like a classical suite divided in five movements with an extraordinary performance of Lisa Gerrard. On the other hand the baritone voice of Brendan Perry stands out in the track "In The Wake Of Adversity", delivering an intense vocal interpretation with a mournful strings pizzicato in the background. A must have album!

Dismal green lakes surrounded by gelid tundra, the veil of fog over landscapes of crypts and tombstones, the abysmal vertigo of sea cliffs, the sound inside cathedrals, the smell of incense in dense shrouds of smoke in mountain pagodas, the solitude of a marbled statue in the solitude of the night, the despair of the flame against the wind.

Moonshine, moonish, lunatic, moon like this album stands as the most deep incarnation of the DCD discography. Its temperament is cold, solitary, ascetic, deep as dark waters, with the philosophy that comes for the ones who does not sleep, for the ones that inspire its thoughts in the nights and see the world within the light from the lamp of Solon. For those this work has a meaning, perhaps codescendent with odd preraphaelites and Romantics alike.

Its profundity its early noticed in the first achord and continues developing with the rythm of stars. Rich in atmosphere,the album excites and suggest many images and ideas at once, starting from the artwork, continuing with the strong melodic sense and finally summing up the most Brendan Perry driven album from the whole DCD discography.

Within the realms of a dying sun is a singular creation, so distant from all its other albums, stands somehow secretly meditating its own fate, half way between a gothic tale, a philosophic meditation and an atmospheric cult to the roughness of time.