“She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes; / Thus mellowed to that tender light / Which heaven to gaudy day denies. “
The first stanza of Lord Byrons’ poem She Walks in Beauty, with its somber allure, perfectly describes the newest album from Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulbers’ FLA offshoot Delerium. The Canadian duo have managed to succeed Byron by trapping heaven in just over a hour of beautiful and transcendental musical prose fittingly titled Mythologie.
The industrial legends have produced a swirling landscape of electro-beats, new age vocals and dreamlike synth pads completed with sharp and dazzling leads. Layered in effects that resound deeply from a living creature swimming in warm waters. As the current of heat rises through the blue pressure the waves form to drive the tones onward while discharging their natural volatility. Mythologie is a moon watchers delight.
Delerium is far from Frontline Assembly but if you’re familiar with their club hit Silence (retroactively considered the best trance track of all time) you’ll be familiar with the dark grandeur that the project communicates. In a similar fashion Mythologie resonates on that same complex emotional level. The contours of which are rapt in finely honed voice production told through the countenance of the songs.
Voices, and of that there are many, where their organic influence in and of the female vocals on many of the songs creates a bewitching dynamic between the cascading synth waves to illicit something similar to ASMR. Now trance and euphoria go together like water to sea but these breathy sirens will teach you how to swim out of your comfort zone in a pool of resonant harmonics.
In returning to the watery theme this album is simply breathtaking and the deeper you listen to its mesmeric form the more dangerous it becomes. Submerging the listener in a torrent of emotional articulation. Its cathartic qualities, as the lyrics compliment, offer a disconnect from banal manipulation and emit a powerful force to be witnessed.
“And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, / So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, / The smiles that win, the tints that glow, / But tell of days in goodness spent, / A mind at peace with all below, / A heart whose love is innocent!”
10/10
