TUE., NOVEMBER 22, 2005
Rumbling Towards Ecstasy
by Robert Phoenix
In the late '80s, Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber were on the front lines of industrial music's revolutionary insurgence, sequencing tortured Roland 808s to do their bidding. While the likes of Ministry, Laibach, Front 242 and Einsturzende Neubauten whipped up the sturm und drang of the last throes of the 20th century, Leeb and Fulber were more like DJs intent on surfing the next synaptic wave with a twiddle of a knob and the slide of a lever. Leeb and Fulber created splinter versions of Front Line Assembly (their core group) such as the nasty, robotic Noise Unit, the techno-rave-oriented Intermix, the incantatory and atmospheric Synesthasia, and Delerium, the moodier, more gothic manifestation of Leeb and Fulber's industrial demons.
Delerium's early manifestations are dark and epic odes with titles like "Morpheus," "Siege of Atrocity" and "Somnolent." Straddling isolationism and gothic film noir soundtracks, the duo from Vancouver found a space to create music that would ultimately redefine not only Leeb and Fulber's musical canon but their very credibility as artists.
Semantic Spaces debuted in 1994 and was unlike anything that Leeb and Fulber had ever assembled. Taking a cue from Enigma and Deep Forest, Delerium mixed Gregorian chant and dance grooves with siren-song vocals. On "Incantation" they blend them with a funky, acid-drenched 808 to create a hybrid of sounds that's dance floor-friendly while establishing themselves as a sound choice for new age listeners on the hunt for something new. Still, some of the beats and sequences sound almost quaint compared to the more sophisticated technology that would later infuse Delerium's work.
Leeb and Fulber followed Semantic Spaces with Karma, featuring the vocals of the Rose Chronicle's Kristy Thirsk, Jacqui Hunt of Single Gun Theory and then-label mate Sarah McLachlan, who graced "Silence." "Silence" sounds like a collaboration between Enigma and B-Tribe, but McLachlan's vocals take lift it above the somewhat mundane and derivative production. Not only does her voice take flight, but the track itself took off, getting remixed and spun on dance floors (check out Tiesto's rousing, eleven-minute-opus on Odyssey—The Remixes). The album sold over 250,000 copies.
While their industrial cohorts were either on a prolonged search for their lost brain cells and hearing or desperately trying to summon the last ghosts left in the machine, Delerium had crossed over as canny trendspotters, creating enough diffuse musical personae to allow them to cover their tracks along the way. By the time McLachlan was warbling over strains of faux flamenco fusion, Noise Unit and Frontline Assembly had ceased to be. Delerium had successfully recreated itself for an audience that was hungry for more music that echoed the cultural fusion purveyed by the likes of Deep Forest and Enigma.
But Delerium coudn't let go of its gothic muse altogether — Karma has its dark moments. The intro to "Lamentation" has strange little voices that sound slightly demonic, looped together underneath a bed of brooding synths; the track shifts with distant harp and dumbek drumming, and then, as if on cue, the strange little voices are revealed to be those of Pygmy youths, joyfully singing in sampled delight. Then the track shifts yet again, adding breathy vocalese with Gregorian polyphony as counterpoint. It skips and shifts from genre to genre without breaking a sweat. It is the embodiment of Delerium, past, present and future.
Inspired by Delerium's work with such varied vocalists, the next two projects, Poem and Chimera, are more song-oriented, using the grooves mastered on Semantic Spaces and Karma as the foundation for more conventional compositional structures. Chimera is an assemblage of female vocalists featuring the slightly disembodied vocals of Julee Cruise (the Twin Peaks theme) on the romantic-bordering-on-cloying "Magic" and the driving dance beats of "Afterall" by Jael. Listening to Chimera, it's hard to believe it was created by two guys who once took pride in recreating the sound of factories firing at 130 beats per minute. Ultimately, Delerium not only succeeded in putting an old age to bed, they also neatly wrapped up a new one in a gossamer shawl — and transformed it into pop music for the 21st century.
Delerium's early manifestations are dark and epic odes with titles like "Morpheus," "Siege of Atrocity" and "Somnolent." Straddling isolationism and gothic film noir soundtracks, the duo from Vancouver found a space to create music that would ultimately redefine not only Leeb and Fulber's musical canon but their very credibility as artists.
Semantic Spaces debuted in 1994 and was unlike anything that Leeb and Fulber had ever assembled. Taking a cue from Enigma and Deep Forest, Delerium mixed Gregorian chant and dance grooves with siren-song vocals. On "Incantation" they blend them with a funky, acid-drenched 808 to create a hybrid of sounds that's dance floor-friendly while establishing themselves as a sound choice for new age listeners on the hunt for something new. Still, some of the beats and sequences sound almost quaint compared to the more sophisticated technology that would later infuse Delerium's work.
Leeb and Fulber followed Semantic Spaces with Karma, featuring the vocals of the Rose Chronicle's Kristy Thirsk, Jacqui Hunt of Single Gun Theory and then-label mate Sarah McLachlan, who graced "Silence." "Silence" sounds like a collaboration between Enigma and B-Tribe, but McLachlan's vocals take lift it above the somewhat mundane and derivative production. Not only does her voice take flight, but the track itself took off, getting remixed and spun on dance floors (check out Tiesto's rousing, eleven-minute-opus on Odyssey—The Remixes). The album sold over 250,000 copies.
While their industrial cohorts were either on a prolonged search for their lost brain cells and hearing or desperately trying to summon the last ghosts left in the machine, Delerium had crossed over as canny trendspotters, creating enough diffuse musical personae to allow them to cover their tracks along the way. By the time McLachlan was warbling over strains of faux flamenco fusion, Noise Unit and Frontline Assembly had ceased to be. Delerium had successfully recreated itself for an audience that was hungry for more music that echoed the cultural fusion purveyed by the likes of Deep Forest and Enigma.
But Delerium coudn't let go of its gothic muse altogether — Karma has its dark moments. The intro to "Lamentation" has strange little voices that sound slightly demonic, looped together underneath a bed of brooding synths; the track shifts with distant harp and dumbek drumming, and then, as if on cue, the strange little voices are revealed to be those of Pygmy youths, joyfully singing in sampled delight. Then the track shifts yet again, adding breathy vocalese with Gregorian polyphony as counterpoint. It skips and shifts from genre to genre without breaking a sweat. It is the embodiment of Delerium, past, present and future.
Inspired by Delerium's work with such varied vocalists, the next two projects, Poem and Chimera, are more song-oriented, using the grooves mastered on Semantic Spaces and Karma as the foundation for more conventional compositional structures. Chimera is an assemblage of female vocalists featuring the slightly disembodied vocals of Julee Cruise (the Twin Peaks theme) on the romantic-bordering-on-cloying "Magic" and the driving dance beats of "Afterall" by Jael. Listening to Chimera, it's hard to believe it was created by two guys who once took pride in recreating the sound of factories firing at 130 beats per minute. Ultimately, Delerium not only succeeded in putting an old age to bed, they also neatly wrapped up a new one in a gossamer shawl — and transformed it into pop music for the 21st century.
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