Speaking of DCD, I just saw this press release:
March 1st, marks a very special new release from City Canyons Records - Peter Ulrich's ENTER THE MYSTERIUM. But beware: Once you cross into this realm, you many never be able to return to the world as you knew it. Prepare to be taken on a journey through a mixture of sounds including world music, ethnic music, art pop, dream pop, ancient and medieval music, new age and dark wave.
Prior to ENTER THE MYSTERIUM, Ulrich was perhaps best known for his long-time collaboration with the legendary Dead Can Dance, the fabulously creative band of the eighties that explored new frontiers of music. Ulrich joined the group in 1983 and appeared on albums like Garden of Arcane Delights, Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun and Spiritchaser, and was a touring member of the group until 1990. He also collaborated on Ivo Watts-Russell's This Mortal Coil project, contributing the song "At First, And Then" to Filigree And Shadow, and also played on the legendary label 4AD with labelmates Michael Brook and the Wolfgang Press as an incidental percussionist. Ulrich's Pathways & Dawns, released on Projekt Records in 1999, featured former Dead Can Dance bandmate Brendan Perry as a producer and arranger. Delighted reviewers of Pathways & Dawns compared Ulrich's work to medieval madrigals, baroque exotica, Todd Rundgren and Brian Eno all in the same sentence, a tribute to the infinite variety of Ulrich's music.
ENTER THE MYSTERIUM is similarly diverse but with brilliant pop influences that should cause it, while losing none of its stunning originality, to appeal to a broader audience. MYSTERIUM features words and music by Ulrich, vocals by Ulrich and Ulrich playing both traditional instruments and a selection of exotic instruments from all over the world. Ulrich's music in MYSTERIUM music recalls "Dead Can Dance" but has an exotic flavor of its own, blending seamlessly an array of musical genres into a lush tapestry of sound and sensation.
But to understand this unique sound, you must enter Ulrich's world of light and shadow, a world of black and white magic, a world haunting, mysterious, sometimes frightening but in the end uplifting--a world powerfully mapped out in Ulrich's new album.
As an added treat, particularly for those who have tired of the pabulum that passes for music on commercial radio, the release of ENTER THE MYSTERIUM coincides with the reuniting of Dead Can Dance for a world tour this spring. Surely the rebirth of creative, risk-taking new music will be as refreshing and warming to music-lovers' hearts as that first spring flower poking through the frost.
You can visit City Canyons Records online at [link] You can also check out a few tracks from the album online at: [link] and >[link]