It takes an intuitive certainty to let your own timeless artistic longevity pass 16 years between two album releases.

Especially in pop culture, which is geared towards short half-lives.

Dead Can Dance, a sound experiment originally launched as a band by Briton Brendan Perry and Australian Lisa Gerrard in Melbourne in 1981 and then continued as a duo, failed in 1998 at the first high point of their career: after the separation of the couple, who were also in a private relationship, the artistic end came .

A short-lived reunion followed seven years later.

It wasn't until 2011 that Dead Can Dance consolidated again in a fixed formation.

In 2012 the album "Anastasis" was released, six years later "Dionysus".

A touch of eternity also pervades the first of two evenings in the Frankfurt Centennial Hall.

With the virtuosos Astrid Williamson, Jules Maxwell (both keyboards and vocals), Dan Gresson (drums), Richard Yale (bass) and Robert Perry (flute, percussion) at their side, the front couple, who were greeted with thunderous applause, happily roamed through their own song canon nine studio albums.

With a few exceptions, the stylistic all-round mix of neoclassic, art rock, medieval chorales, Afro-polyrhythmic, Celtic folk and mantras from the Middle and Far East presents the two main voices alternately.

Sometimes fantasy language, sometimes English

With their precise interventions, the ex-couple in subdued lighting to psychedelic background projections also visually gives an unequal picture: with a meticulous Princess Grace Patricia memorial high hairstyle on their head and wrapped in an antique floor-length cape, raises the gothic queen from the Fan community adored Lisa Gerrard for her flawless contra-alto voice, meticulously used the Chinese dulcimer Yang-Qin.

Having matured into a recognized film composer, she has just returned from a tour with her long-term artistic partner, Hollywood heavyweight Hans Zimmer.

Brendan Perry's velvety baritone charisma is extremely earthly.

He regularly switches between electrically amplified bouzouki and electric guitar, occasionally picking up the drum.

While Lisa Gerrard uses onomatopoeic fantasy language, Brendan Perry intones his more accessible hymns mostly in English.

Elaborate sound collages of overlength keep Dead Can Dance ready for mental cinema: "Opium" and "Black Sun" each live from hymn-like harmony and intricate polyrhythms, with "Amnesia" the slow-motion beat is dragged out.

"Sanvean" sparkles in ethereal transcendence without any rhythm and reduced to a trio.

"Persian Love Song (The Silver Gun)" is back in the repertoire after decades.

Addresses to the audience, on the other hand, are consistently brief: Gerrard only communicates with a stern look and a hint of a smile, Perry with just a few words.

After the encore with "Children of the Sun", "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" and "Severance", Brendan Perry in particular shows humility.