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i saw Dead Can Dance last night...


timouse

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...and was totally blown away!

niffermouse has been a dcd fan for ever, and when they played toronto 10 years ago she passed on it thinking that they would likely be around next year...

d'oh!

so when they announced that they were coming, there was really no decision to make. i had heard a lot of their recordings and am pretty taken with them. they make extremely "thick" music...lots of layered percussion, and planty of odd instruments (hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer). they have done several movie soundtracks, and their strong rhythm base lends a very middle eastern feel to a lot of their grooves. so despite the universe deciding to close the gardiner this weekend and not really tell anyone until we were fully in the thick of chaos traffic, we made it in to massey hall halfway through their ist number, which iirc was a spacey vocal thing by lisa gerrard. i can't say enough about her voice, and she and brendan perry, the other front person, can sing like the dickens.

lisa gerrard has a more-octave-than-i-can-comfortably -comprehend vocal range, and sounds as though she's a trained opera singer. brendan, the guitar/voice/hurdy-gurdy guy, has an incredible baritone crooner voice, and at points sounded like sinatra without the attitude :)

they are a very democratic band, which impressed me endlessly...they seemed to all switch up instruments every couple of songs.the guy who started off as the bass player rotated out after a couple of tunes and became the guitar tech, only to appear later on keys at the other side of the stage. and the percussion! a kit drummer (who rotated through hand drums, guitar, bass, and other percussion), an orchestral percussionst (tenor drums, cymbals, gong), congas and other hand drums. at any one time there were at least three people playing percussion, plus incidental small hand rhythms elsewhere on the stage.

i'm at at total loss to reproduce a set list, but have to say that if they ever come round again i'm in. the only complaint that i had was that just as they would get an impossibly complex 4 person polyrhythm knock your socks off sort of groove really cooking, the song would end! :) i think that the grateful dead have spoiled me for live music...

as we were leaving, i do think that i saw a couple of familiar faces stading out front, but couldn't for the life of me put names to the faces.

so if any of you skancs were there, what did you think?

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Oh that would have been a wonderful experience! They have so much feeling in their music - I wish I could have seen them live. I bet it sounded amazing on the loud system!

it was great. the soundman had really good ears, everything was crystal clear. massey hall sounds great for that sort of thing. hopefully they liked it & will ocme back :)

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