Lisa Gerrard & Jules Maxwell

★★★ Burn ATLANTIC CURVE. CD/DL/LP

Dead Can Dancers file longgestating venture. James Chapman of MAPS assists.

Singing in a tongue of her own creation à la Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins, Lisa Gerrard here collaborates with DCD bandmate/Irish theatre composer Jules Maxwell on a partimprovised album that has shades of early Vangelis, modern electronica, and Bulgarian and Anatolian folk. On Heleali and Orion, the operatic tics of Gerrard’s voice merge with Maxwell’s anthemic, cinematic music spectacularly, conjuring a gutsier, less ethereal Enya. Six years in the making, the record was seeded when Gerrard and Maxwell began writing for Bulgarian choir Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares at home in Australia, and eventually finished with James Chapman at the suggestion of Gerrard’s publisher, who noted MAPS’ music, too, had “big horizons at its core”. Overall, the euphoric, sometimes ambient Burn sounds like an enigmatic requiem; music for your own act of remembrance.