Lisa Gerrard - 'Immortal Memory' (4AD)
4/5
By: Samantha Hall
A haunting, Gaelic orchestral piece by the renowned artist and composer that brought us the soundtrack to 'Whalerider', collaborating with Eire mastermind-musicale, Patrick Cassidy.
Graceful yet vastly empowering and endearingly melodramatic, the sheer intensity of this album is like none other for many-a-year; if you envisage Anglo Saxon folktale heroines crying from the tops of rain-strewn towers, then you come slightly near to the sheer imagery that this music invokes.
It's an unearthing fact that life and indeed music is more frightening and overpowering, yet indeed beautiful, when you have your eyes and ears wide open to absorb the reality of just what is being presented. 'Immortal Memory' doesn't cheat this rule. Forceful to the point of unnerving, Gerrard takes her practice from her past, as half of the definitive group Dead Can Dance, who prided themselves in a refusal to accept that music was a transient, fleeting fancy of humankind, forever reaching back to realms untouched by most modern musicians
On 'Immortal Memory', that approach is taken to its most fundamental extremes. Choosing subjects and styles close to her heart and adjacent to her heritage, the first track, 'The Song of Amergin', is her own interpretation of what legend has it is the first poem uttered on Irish soil by man. And if you thought that was heavy, later on in this collection is an arrangement of 'The Lord's Prayer' in Aramaic - the language spoken by Jesus.
Ultimately Gerrard's music, however sellable and undoubtedly successful she will become for her film soundtracks, should be left as it is: in its purest and more complete form, as demonstrated quite lovingly herein.
Artists in this article: Lisa Gerrard
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