Delerium - Karma

By 1997, Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber had spent a decade making punishing industrial music as Front Line Assembly. Karma was the record where their other project, a side outlet for ambient experiments, turned into something far larger than the day job. Released on Nettwerk in April of that year after roughly twelve months of work, it took the ethereal-world-music mood of the era and gave it real emotional weight.

The album runs on voices. Sarah McLachlan sings "Silence," Lisa Gerrard brings her unmistakable glossolalia to "Forgotten Worlds," and Kristy Thirsk carries four tracks including "Euphoria (Firefly)." The Gregorian chant threaded through the record is not a sample library: Leeb and Fulber booked a thirty-piece choir into a West Vancouver church and recorded it live, which is exactly why it sits in the mix like a room rather than a loop. Around all of it sit patient synth beds, tabla and hand percussion, and a production touch that stays airy no matter how many layers are stacked.

"Silence" became the story. A modest album track at first, it was rebuilt by a wave of remixers in 2000, reached the UK top three, hit number one in Ireland, went platinum in multiple countries, and turned into one of the foundational records of global trance. The Tiësto version is still routinely voted among the greatest dance tracks ever made. Karma itself went Gold in Canada and remains the group's defining statement, praised on arrival for balancing machine precision with genuine human warmth.

This 2LP edition presses the album on olive green vinyl and houses it in a gatefold sleeve. A cornerstone of late '90s electronic music, and a record that sounds enormous on a proper system.