Into the Labyrinth is the sixth studio album by Australian band Dead Can Dance, released on 13 September 1993, by 4AD. It marked a shift from their previous albums, putting ethnic music influences at the forefront, as would be the case in the later albums. It was their first album completed on their own without the aid of guest musicians, and their first album to have a major-label release in the US, thanks to a distribution deal that 4AD had with Warner Bros. Records. It featured the single "The Ubiquitous Mr<!--UK:NO PERIOD--> Lovegrove".

Into the Labyrinth sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide.

Overview

During the making of Into the Labyrinth, Perry and Gerrard were now living far apart and writing music independently (Perry was living on an island in the middle of a river in Ireland, while Gerrard lived in Australia with her husband and daughter). For the album, Gerrard traveled back to Perry's studio Quivvy Church (in County Cavan, Ireland) where they merged their songs and recorded the album over a period of three months together. This was the first album where Perry and Gerrard played all instruments, without guest musicians. The lyrics are in English on tracks 2–4, 8, and 11. Gerrard sings in a self-created wordless vocal technique similar to glossolalia on tracks 1, 5–7, 9–10. Tracks 3 and 10 were performed a cappella.

In the UK, the CD album was simultaneously released along a limited edition double vinyl LP (featuring "Bird" and "Spirit", the two 1991 bonus tracks from A Passage in Time).

The title alludes to the classic legend of Greek mythology about Theseus going into the Labyrinth against the Minotaur. While not necessarily a concept album, this link adds some conceptual cohesion to the album. This theme is reflected in several song titles: "Ariadne" (the legendary Ariadne giving her clew to Theseus); "Towards the Within" (of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur being at the centre); "The Spider's Stratagem" (waiting at the centre of her web like the Minotaur waiting at the centre of the Labyrinth—but also a Bertolucci film adapting a Borges short story from Labyrinths): and "Emmeleia" (the Greek dance of tragedy)

Track information

  • "Yulunga (Spirit Dance)": in Gerrard's native Australia, yulunga means "dance" or "spirit dance", apparently related to the verb yulugi (to dance, to play) in the Gamilaraay language of the Aboriginal Kamilaroi (Indigenous Australians). In an Aboriginal dreamtime legend, Yulunga is a variant of Julunggul, the Aboriginal mythological Rainbow Serpent goddess. 4AD created a music video for the song using clips from the film Baraka.
  • "The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove": Perry described him as his alter ego, "the abstract relationship of myself and woman". The title referred to a 1965 Danger Man episode, a TV spy show, known in the US as Secret Agent, starring Patrick McGoohan.
  • "The Wind That Shakes the Barley": A late 18th-century traditional Irish ballad that Lisa Gerrard wanted to record her own version of, "it was meant to be a rallying song, but it has such an intense sadness that it becomes an anti-war song".
  • "The Spider's Stratagem": The title referred obliquely to the Labyrinth, via the 1970 Bertolucci film The Spider's Stratagem (La strategia del ragno) adapting a short story by master of the Labyrinth Jorge Luis Borges, "Theme of the Traitor and Hero" published in English in Labyrinths.
  • "Emmeleia": The title (in Greek ἐ<!--GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI-->μμέλεια, meaning "gracefulness" or "harmonization") was the name of the grave and dignified dance of tragedy in the theatre of ancient Greece (each dramatic genre featured its own chorus dance, being the emmeleia or emmelīa in tragedy, the kordax or cordax in comedy, and the sikinnis or sicinnis in satyr-play). The "lyrics" derive from Lisa Gerrard's usual glossolalia, but because she had to write down a phonetic version for Brendan Perry to sing along with her, this song sounds much more like a structured language. Written transcriptions exist but no language could be recognised.
  • "How Fortunate the Man With None": For the lyrics, Perry picked four stanzas from Bertolt Brecht's 1928 poem "Die Ballade von den Prominenten", in the English translation by John Willett (Brecht used a similar version of this poem as "Die Schädlichkeit von Tugenden" in his 1939 play Mother Courage and Her Children, and a slightly different version as "Sa<!--A:GERMAN-->lomon-Song" in his 1928 Threepenny Opera, act III, number 18). Perry then set them to music for a Temenos Academy production of the play. It was only the second time such permission was granted by the Brecht estate, the previous one being in 1963.

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! scope="row"| UK Independent Albums (OCC)

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Release history

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! Country

! Date

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| United Kingdom

| 13 September 1993

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| United States

| 14 September 1993

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| Spain

| 1994

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| Russia

| 2006

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| Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Europe

| 2008

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| United States

| 2010

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References

Sources consulted

Endnotes

  • Into the Labyrinth lyrics at Genius.com

; About "Emmeleia" lyrics

  • "Emmeleia" lyrics – a copy of the widespread transcription
  • "Anyone here much of a linguist?" (2006) – 3-page user discussion at ForumPlanet.com
  • "What is this language?" (2007) – 2-page user discussion at Unilang.org