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| Crescent |
 Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:12 pm |
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Silencer
Joined: 23 Sep 2005
Posts: 1031
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Brendan, how many times did you play this city besides DCD?
A few times…I played The Bowery in 1999. Dead Can Dance performed in 2005 at Radio City Hall…but before that we played about three times during the 90’s…I think the first visit was very late 80’s or so.
Why did it take over a decade for you to release your second solo album? Did you lose interest in writing music?
I never lost interest in creating music, I was always making music, experimenting with things…First of all, I took time off because I had a daughter, I met a wonderful lady in my life who I am married to now. Just got more into family life, really. But I was always making music, more experimental, I learned how to operate electronic equipment. I bought a few vintage synthesizers and learned to program them…I also pursued other passions, archery for example.
Archery, wow. That’s pretty cool. Any other interests?
Yeah, I’m a bit of a polymath, I’m interested in everything [smiles]…so at the time I was into archery and boating. I acquired a couple of boats, I love the sea…so yeah, music didn’t really become an all consuming passion. But having said that, I’ve never stopped making music…rough sketches of possible tracks, etc…
How did the 2005 Dead Can Dance world tour occur? Are you in touch with Lisa on a regular basis nowadays, were you during all this time?
We do talk on and off, it’s just that she’s very busy...since 1993 she’s been doing at least three movies a year, occasional tours, not as often as she would like. So yeah, we kind of kept in touch and that tour happened because we had the possibility to tour according to the ideals we’ve always had. Dead Can Dance really grew up in popularity after it disbanded. So we had the opportunity to play places like Radio City Music Hall or Hollywood Bowl with an orchestra, which has always been a dream we could never accomplish. It was really a dream tour in a way, very thrilling. After that though, we sort of went back to what we were already doing.
Why did Dead Can Dance stop with Spiritchaser?
To be honest, during those last years, the music, the vibe that Lisa brought to the live concerts was very different than the music I was coming with. She was very operatic, orchestral, strings with voice in a way if you will…and I was really into percussion and Middle Eastern music as I’ve always been. And so the potential to making a new album just wasn’t there. I mean we could pull it off live, and it would come out great for the fans because we were mixing in old music we wrote together, but in the studio, it just didn’t work anymore.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been a cohesive effort, and you feared that a new Dead Can Dance album would have really been an album with half of her songs and half of yours on it?
Exactly…
You’ve just announced that in 2012 Dead Can Dance will be back with a new studio album and a full world tour. What changed, why now?
Well, the timing is right now, we both want to do it. This winter we’ll begin work on a new album, yes… She lives in Australia, I live in Ireland but we’ve both been writing music specifically for Dead Can Dance. We share files over the internet…we’ll go back and forth I guess, I’ll send a file with percussion rhythms for a song, she’ll send me back ideas, strings.
How did the DCD creating process occur over the sixteen years? Even if you wrote most of the music it’s pretty clear that she brought a lot to the table too. It wasn’t your songs or her songs…
Yeah, I mean it’s where we crossed paths it’s where it got interesting. For example, the last official album, Spiritchaser, it probably was the most collaborative album we ever worked on together. There were so many harmonies, vocal harmonies that we didn’t really explore on the earlier albums…I’d like to get back into that, with our voices coming together in harmonic clusters or what have you. But don’t ask me how it’s going to sound because I don’t know just yet. So after this winter, I suspect Lisa will come to the studio in Ireland in next summer, and we’ll release the album next fall, which will coincide with the world tour…
Let’s talk about Ark. It has a lot of work put into it, down to every detail and sound. Also it’s so obvious that it’s a very personal album…you call the songs ‘observations’. It really deals with the world today, doesn’t it…politics, war, the environment.
It deals with several things that affect me and cause me a great deal of frustration, anger and…disgust, dread. The political situation, the wars that are going on, the terrorism bullocks that’s going on. But before of it, it deals with the ecological context, that’s why I named the album Ark. It deals with the myth of Noah, the deluge, an impending catastrophy on an ecological level…
You think we’re heading there?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. One of my biggest passions is history, and I’ve seen in books, I’ve read about the great civilizations crumbling through time. We just never seem to learn lessons from the past, it’s kind of a recurrent amnesia that affects humanity. What’s happening right now in the world is that science isn’t getting through in a dynamic way to actually change something. People are just not changing their ways. America is the forefront of a lot of the problems in relation to pollution, the carbon emissions, 50% of the energy that’s created here is still driven by coal, which is unbelievable. There will be a point beyond which there will be no return. The problem is…with the biological world we live in, is that it will run away from us, and we don’t have the technology to save us. Science can make us aware of it, but we can’t save us, we just can’t. And it’s not gonna be a like a huge holocaust or end of days like Christians are expecting, it’s not gonna be a rapid thing…it’s gonna be a very slow and painful process. The quality of life on this planet will be so poor for the majority. And that’s the thing that upsets me and disgusts me, is that it is right around the corner. It’s happening as we speak, the quality of life is taking a nosedive.
I also detect a little bit of optimism on this album. Is there a shade of hope for us all, you think?
Yeah, there is hope…
Dead Can Dance always tought us that love can change everything…
Well, it depends what you’re in love with. [smiles]
Life?
Well, thinking about the future generations should be the right start, the only chance we have, really. I think that parents need to think about their children and what their generation will inherit…That’s the whole key to it. We have to accept that we’re all gonna die one day one way or another, and we’re not gonna see the fruits of our labor to change something, but they will. They will harvest that, they can only have what we leave them with, what we leave behind. Also universality is an important key too. We have to stop this notion of patriotism, nationalism, and think more of us all as an universal collective, that’s the only way we can change something. As opposed to this dynamic, capitalist, competitive thing that’s going on now.
Right…everyone’s watching their own interest only, nobody cares about anything else other than money and profit, about their own country’s welfare, and small nations will always suffer in the name of the big one’s interests.
Exactly. And that’s why I think America and China, the biggest player in the game, should be the first ones to step up to the plate and actually do something to change this, because only then the world will follow.
What’s your role as an artist in all of this? What impact would you like to make with your music?
Well, I’m not preaching, I’m not politicizing. These things are observations, think of them as warnings for an observer on a hill. That’s all I’m doing, just watching things. And it does take up a great amount of time, I’m just genuinely concerned about us, here.
You went to a Catholic school. That’s interesting…Dead Can Dance always seemed to be a very free spirited entity, far beyond religion.
Well, my parents were not religious at all. I actually went to school in England in non-denomination schools. It’s just that when we went to New Zeeland, there were no other schools around. So that’s the only reason why I went there. It didn’t really affect my outlook on religion so much. We studied the bible, Christ and so on. But I was always more into Greek mythology, I just love it to this day. As a child, those tales of ancient Greece, Rome, ancient Babylon or Egypt, always brought me the most joy.
Do you have a soft spot for pagan beliefs then?
Yeah, I’m definitely more pagan. Monotheism is an absolute plague on this planet.
My God is better than your God…
Yeah, yeah. It’s always about The One. I’m more into pluralism. I want to live in a pluralistic world, not a monotheistic one.
That’s an utopia though…it seems that these monotheistic religions are here to stay..
I think utopia is more of a state of mind, that’s where true freedom really is, in your mind. My utopia (the song) finishes with “In our utopia you will be queen, I will be king, you will be free to be whoever you want to be…” That’s what utopia is for me, not a system like Plato’s republic, not something defining how we should be governed.
What does Brendan Perry listen to when he’s not writing music?
Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of jap-rock from late 60’s and 70s, a lot of Far East Family Band and such…
What in the world is jap-rock? You’ll have to excuse my ignorance…sound interesting though. Does it come from Japan? J
Yeah, it is interesting [smiles]. I’m a big fan of kraut-rock, and they have a lot in common, similar backgrounds. You had these emerging teenagers discussing how the previous generation was so robotic; it’s basically a rejection of the previous music generation. They were more political charged…the music itself is very influenced by kraut-rock, but they give it a purely oriental Japanese sound.
Taken from
http://transylvanianhungerrr.blogspot.com/2011/07/brendan-perry-interview_08.html
Thank you for sharing on your blog |
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Vade retro vanitas, ave contristatio. c g es f d es |
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| little swan |
| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 5:20 pm |
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Silencer
Joined: 30 Oct 2004
Posts: 864
Location: Berlin, Germany
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| I don't share all his views but this is a beautiful and informative interview. thanks! |
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| vonnegut_91 |
| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 8:22 pm |
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Arcane
Joined: 13 Sep 2010
Posts: 25
Location: Grapevine, TX
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Brendan is right, in my opinion.
"We are as one in a sea of sand....." — Saffron/Babylon |
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| zeitga |
| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 8:54 pm |
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Sanvean
Joined: 03 Nov 2009
Posts: 200
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| zeitga |
| Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 7:15 pm |
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Sanvean
Joined: 03 Nov 2009
Posts: 200
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btw, thanks for this interesting interview Crescent, Brendan seems in good shape and bring good news  |
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