Spleen and Ideal

Dead Can Dance’s second album, Spleen And Ideal (1985), saw them experiment more with instrumentation, abandoning guitars in favour of cello, trombone and timpani. Widely acclaimed, there was now a richness of unification between voice and music, lyrics and structure, showing they had a concrete sense of the aural ideal they were striving towards. It’s title was taken from Spleen et Idéal, a collection of poems by 18th century French poet Charles Baudelaire. The 2016 LP version is a repress of the original release.