Dead Can Dance is the debut studio album by Dead Can Dance, as released on 27 February 1984 on the 4AD label.
Recording and production
The album was recorded at Blackwing Studios in London. The musicians include Brendan Perry, Lisa Gerrard, Paul Erikson, James Pinker and Peter Ulrich. The instrumentation consisted of guitars, bass guitar and drums, with added percussion and the very distinct sound of the yangqin, as played by Gerrard.
Initially scheduled for two weeks in the studio, the band eventually appealed to 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell for an additional week. Perry recalled that the time constraints, as well as friction with engineer John Fryer, made the experience less than ideal:<blockquote>We hadn't been gigging a lot. We'd only done like two or three live shows, and so we weren't well rehearsed going into it...also, we didn't get on with [Fryer] at all...but we managed to get it done in the end, swamped with reverb...we really didn't capture our live sound at all, it sounds overprocessed and kind of thin-sounding to my ears.
Album cover
The album cover was designed by Brendan Perry and consists of a photo of a mask from Papua New Guinea on the left side, and on the right, the Greek characters "ΔΞΛΔ CΛΝ ΔΛΝCΞ", which aimed to visually resemble the title "DEAD CAN DANCE".