Delerium - Exaudire

Nearly four decades after Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber started Delerium as a dark ambient outlet away from their work in Front Line Assembly, the duo returns with its sixteenth studio album. The title comes from the Latin for listening, hearing and being heard, and it fits a record built to be taken in slowly, with full attention, somewhere between the physical and the dreamlike.

The project’s signature approach is fully intact: lush, downtempo electronics paired with a cast of distinctive guest voices. Longtime collaborators Mimi Page, Inna Walters, Phildel and Jaël all return, but the most striking moment is “Into The Light,” which weaves in portions of avant-garde vocalist Diamanda Galás’s 1986 work “Deliver Me From Mine Enemies” and moves from distorted tension toward something almost trance-like. “Dream Palace” brings in LA dream-pop duo Magic Wands for guitar and vocals, adding a shimmering, guitar-led texture to the mix. Leeb and Fulber produced, with longtime engineer Greg Reely handling recording, mixing and mastering.

This is the same lineage that gave the world “Silence” with Sarah McLachlan, along with vocal turns from Lisa Gerrard, Leigh Nash and Emily Haines, and earned the group two Juno Awards along the way. Exaudire continues that tradition of atmospheric, emotionally direct electronic songcraft, and shows a band still widening its palette forty years in.

This limited edition presents all twelve tracks as a double album pressed on oxblood-colored vinyl, a fitting format for a record made for deep, uninterrupted listening.