"Empires and Dance" is the third studio album by the Scottish new wave band Simple Minds. It was released on 12 September 1980 through Arista Records.
The album was influenced by the band's experience of traveling in Europe on their previous tour. Prior to the album's release, the band demoed several of their new songs, including "Capital City" and "I Travel," which had been featured during that tour. "Room" was initially recorded as a John Peel session in December 1979, along with three songs from Real to Real Cacophony. These recordings were later included in the 2004 box set Silver Box.
Associated with the British post-punk scene of the time, alongside bands like Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen, Empires and Dance saw Simple Minds incorporating influences from disco and electronic music. These influences came from artists such as Donna Summer, Kraftwerk, and Grace Jones, which the band encountered in German nightclubs.
The album features lengthier, structured songs like "I Travel," "This Fear of Gods," and "Thirty Frames a Second," as well as more experimental tracks such as "Contantinople Line," "Twist/Run/Repulsion," and "Kant-Kino." Jim Kerr's lyrics are written from the perspective of a character traveling through central Europe and observing his surroundings. The lyrics to "This Fear of Gods" were partly inspired by a story by Jorge Luis Borges that Kerr had recently read. "Twist/Run/Repulsion" includes Chantalle Jeunet reading from a French translation of Nevsky Prospect by Nikolay Gogol.
