album of the day. no.9 Dead Can Dance-Spleen and Ideal (1985)
I have to say that there is albums through out my life that have affected me and this one is right up there. I was madly into the gothic rock genre and all its related spin offs. A hearing of tracks by DCD on the 'lonely is an eyesore' album and liking the track 'frontier'. But it took me about 2 years to order this album, it was showing on a record company list in around 89/90 that it was being deleted.(I worked in record shop) I imagine it was not being deleted by 4AD but some of their distribution. Anyway I had always like the striking artwork of the cover. I think it was a building that was being blown up in stockport in the mid 80s, which went wrong and created this striking image. I like the way you can see a lorry behind the person in red. No health and safety back then.
When I heard this it basically made me realise that it was truly gothic music. It was dark, yet uplifting. The instrumentation on the album is stunning, this was the time when the band was a sum of its parts. Part of the band would go on to form heavenly bodies in late 80s. In a way from hearing it I almost discarded all the gothic records I was buying. A bit like when you keep on buying stuff and then you realise that all that has gone before cannot better this album.
I went back and checked out the album before but that was the sound of a band finding its feet and has some good tracks. I really do like the Brendan Perry tracks on this. Which I prefer to the Lisa Gerrard tracks(she has recently left the band), which means the band may continue and be more linked to Perry works. Which are so great.
As I said before the album affected me in a way, beyond merely changing about the way i viewed gothic music. It also lyrcially seem to capture a time of life when I was dealing with Narcissism all the after affects of that. The lyrics are so powerful. A album that affects me still listening to now ,more than any of their works.