Brendan Perry at Eter: the Dead Can Dance founder with music from his solo album “Ark”

Brendan Perry has been one of alternative music’s most intriguing figures for the past three decades. Born into an English-Irish family, Perry grew up in East London before moving to New Zealand with his parents. There, in 1977, he began his musical career under the name Ronnie Recent as the bassist and later also singer of punk band The Scavengers. Two years later, the band moved to Australia and changed its name to Marching Girls. Perry left in 1980 to pursue solo musical experiments. Dead Can Dance formed in 1981. The original line-up comprised Brendan Perry, Simon Monroe and Paul Erikson, with Lisa Gerrard the last to join. Over sixteen years of activity, Dead Can Dance made 9 albums.

In 1999, while working on “Spritchaser”, the group’s final album, Lisa and Brendan realised that they were no longer moving in the same direction. They jointly decided to end their musical partnership and began working on solo projects. That same year, Perry released “Eye of the Hunter”, an album built almost entirely around live instruments.

Perry spent 2000–2005 at Quivvy Church in Ireland, running percussion workshops with his brother Robert using traditional Afro-Cuban and East African drums. The same church hosted the recording of Dead Can Dance’s “Into The Labirynth” and “Spritchaser” and Perry’s solo “Eye of the Hunter”. After eleven years, Brendan Perry returns with “Ark”, featuring tracks including “Babylon” and “Crescent”, composed for Dead Can Dance’s brief 2005 reunion and promoted during the Dead Can Dance Reunion Tour.