Dead Can Dances second album, Spleen And Ideal (1985), saw them experiment more with instrumentation, abandoning guitars in favour of cello, trombone and timpani. Widely acclaimed, there was now a richness of unification between voice and music, lyrics and structure, showing they had a concrete sense of the aural ideal they were striving towards. Its title was taken from Spleen et Idal, a collection of poems by 18th century French poet Charles Baudelaire.

The 2016 LP version is a vinyl repress of the original release.