On 11 June 1990, Dead Can Dance released their fifth studio album, 'Aion'. The album cover shows a detail from the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch's triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (specifically, its central "Earth" panel).
On this album, Dead Can Dance explored early music to a greater degree, including medieval music and Renaissance music, as Perry noted, "synonymous with the Bosch period"; this included pieces like the 14th-century Italian dance instrumental ("Saltarello") and 16th-century Catalan ballad ("The Song of the Sibyl"), lyrics from 17th-century Spanish baroque poet Luis de Góngora ("Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book"), and instrumentation such as hurdy-gurdy and viols.