But Gerrard continues to explore World Music, especially from the Middle East and Ireland. Her new album on 4AD Records, Immortal Memory, is a soundtrack for the mind, incorporating flavors from many cultures and making use of both electronics and the formidable instrument that is her own voice.

Immortal Memory teams Gerrard with Patrick Cassidy, considered Ireland’s foremost contemporary composer. Like Gerrard, who has moved from the world of Rock to that of orchestrated music, Cassidy went from early piano studies to playing in a rock band with his brother, and later drew upon his family’s Celtic roots (he grew up speaking the old Irish language) to create compositions based upon the archetypal Irish myths of Deirdre and The Children of Lir.

Immortal Memory opens with “The Song of Amergin,” a poem reputed in Irish myth to be the first utterance of a mortal on Irish land. (Amergin, a Milesian warrior, conquered Ireland’s ruling gods, the Tuatha De Danaan). The liner notes feature the poem in Irish Gaelic as well as English. One can almost hear the sound of the sea tossing on the rocks when Gerrard sings these words. Two tracks later, Gerrard and Cassidy give us “Amergin’s Invocation,” which like many of Gerrard’s compositions, does not seem to have audible words. It’s not the words that matter here though, but the mood. Old castles on hilltops, wounded warriors shuffling along dusty roads, the fear of unknown gods and spirits - the music invokes all of this, giving us a trip back in time to the early Middle Ages.

We get a taste of another culture with “Abwoon (Our Father,)” which is a musical setting of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, the ancient language of the Middle East and native tongue of Jesus. Here too, the Aramaic lyric and translation have been provided in the liner notes, but as with the Gaelic, don’t expect the sound of the words to resemble their appearance in print. Gerrard gives thanks to two phoneticists for helping her with these languages.

Gerrard also finds meaning in the mere use of recording effects. On “Paradise Lost,” the sound fades in and out; her voice at times sounds so far away that you may be tempted to turn up the volume. She uses the extraordinary range of her voice as an instrument in songs like “I Asked For Love” where she achieves some very low notes indeed.

The album ends with a hymn, “Psallit In Aure Dei,” which is Latin for “ Make Music in God’s Ear.” The Latin lyric would seem to sum up the mood and effect of the whole album. Non clamor, sed amor. “Don’t make noise, make love.”