Click HERE to listen. In a manner that is extremely true to life itself, I’ve found an autumnal photograph that simply begged to be posted. Things like that happen quite a lot, when I browse through my files, while listening to music. At the moment, I’m listening to my favorite group: Dead Can Dance. They’ve disbanded, but reunited just last year. As far as I know, they’re on tour soon: that’s a good thing. I love their music, and I’m inordinately happy that Lisa Gerrard, the female half of that duo/occasional group, is enjoying a nice career as a solo artist and soundtrack composer. But anyway, back to the leaf. As you can see, it’s not a living leaf. It’s an oak leaf, but precisely what kind of oak, I’m not quite sure. It’s not exactly alive, as its color and holes indicate. It was a cool and sunny day (as this picture indicates) when I took this photograph. It’s a throwback to an earlier age as I saw this in the parking lot of a dental office. We’d arrived early and the office wasn’t open yet. I had precious little to do before our delivery of a compressor, and so I wandered around, looking for things to photograph. An oak leaf came to the rescue, and this is the end result. It goes rather good with “The Spider’s Strategem” from Dead Can Dance, and so here it is. In terms of the music I’m listening to, I’ve just learned that Dead Can Dance will be releasing a new album this year. As I saw no signs of it in music stores as yet, I can safely say that I haven’t missed the first day of sales. With my new job, I can definitely say that I plan to be in a local music store, in line, holding a new Dead Can Dance CD in my happy hand, while plotting the quickest way to the nearest playback device. Of course there’s always the MP3 download option, but the thing with Dead Can Dance is the necessity for the actual album/CD, especially in terms of the music itself and the cover art, and the wonderful elegance of the 4AD label logo. I know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I’ll be transported back to my high-school-through-college days, when Dead Can Dance were new and unknown and (apparently) from the other side of the galaxy. Now they’re well-respected even worshipped, and still largely unknown, at least in the USA. Like this leaf, Dead Can Dance is trans-seasonal—perennial in a way. They’re a musical force to be reckoned with, and categories do not fit them. For the sake of convenience, they’re listed as “Rock” in music stores…as “world music” by those who have no clue where else to categorize them, and for those who make some strange attempts at nearly-successful categorization, they’re pushed into the “Classical” music section. That’s mostly because of their overall instrumentation, and the magic of Lisa Gerrard’s always gorgeous (and sometimes spooky) voice. I don’t know how many octaves comprise her range, but it’s a lot of octaves! And to top it off…she’s elegant and playful in a sly manner. She also plays a Chinese instrument, and learned singing techniques from Armenians living in Australia. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find that to be…well…just the sort of thing I’d do, if I had anything to do with Chinese musical instruments and Armenian folk singers living down the street from me. As it stands, I’ve only got dead oak leaves and dental equipment in my past (and so I won’t be releasing any music albums, any time soon) but maybe I have something to write about, when I’m not cruising down Memory Lane, listening to songs with poetic titles and non-linguistic vocals. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, commenting (and listening, if you clicked the above link) and I hope you’re all having a great week.