Brendan Perry

Following the dissolution of Dead Can Dance, Brendan Perry joined forces with Hector Zazou for the 1998 album Lights in the Dark and lent his hand to co-producing and arranging Pathways and Dawns for his onetime bandmate Peter Ulrich. By the close of the decade he had launched percussion workshops in Afro-Cuban and African Manding traditions from his Quivvy Church residence and studio in Belturbet, County Cavan—the Irish county tied to Perry’s mother—eventually giving rise to the local samba ensemble known as The Salamanders. His debut solo effort, Eye of the Hunter, appeared on the longstanding 4AD imprint in 1999. Three years later he spearheaded the launch of an international samba festival in Belturbet. A brief Dead Can Dance reunion with Lisa Gerrard followed in 2005, consisting of a short farewell trek backed by a 40-piece orchestra; alongside their established repertoire the performances introduced the new pieces “Babylon” and “Crescent,” both of which surfaced on Perry’s 2010 solo album Ark, issued stateside in mid-2011. Dead Can Dance returned to the studio for Anastasis in 2012—their first full-length in sixteen years—and spent the ensuing eighteen months circling the globe. In 2013 the group revealed plans to sell Quivvy Church Studio ahead of Perry’s relocation to France, where he would construct a new workspace; while Gerrard maintained her independent and film-related projects, Perry oversaw the build and prepared for a collaborative recording venture. In 2017 he took the lead vocal role on guitarist Olivier Mellano’s No Land project, an undertaking that examined intersections among contemporary styles, new music, and the repertoire of Breton Pipe Bands while dissolving boundaries among additional folk lineages. Mellano assembled Perry alongside the thirty musicians of Bagad’ Cesson for the sessions, and the completed album reached listeners that November.