Delirious?

Living Life Out Loud

By Bruce Adolph

When youâre talking to a bandâs manager, you learn to take whatever they tell you with a little grain of salt. Rightfully they should be excited about the band they work with. You wouldnât want a manager who couldnât really care less about your career moves, right? So a few months ago when I talked with Tony Patato (Deliriousâ manager) about the upcoming release from the fab-five from South Hampton, England, I tried not to be completely swayed by the eloquent way in which he joyfully described the new album. His enthusiasm was indeed infectious. Iâve also learned that discretion can protect me, and that as much as I wanted to believe every word he was saying, I needed to take into account that at that time I hadnât heard one bit of it.

Tony told me that the new project, Glo, was stripped down and aimed vertically at God like Cutting Edge, but that it had the strong hooks in it like King of Fools and the stylistic artistry of Mezzamorphis. He said that it would be a record that all of the different Delirious fans could access. Well, Iâve had an advance copy of the CD for a few weeks now, and I have to say that somewhere in jolly olâ England thereâs one band manager who spoke very accurately about his bandâs latest project.

Glo is a multidimensional recording that will draw the listeners smack into the bandâs zeal for worshipping God. Delirious couldâve taken the easy road and put out an obligatory ãmodern worshipä album. They couldâve slopped together a quick ãback-to-our-rootsä project that wouldâve taken care of those fans whining for a return to their earlier writings.

But instead, the band has risen to the occasion and again forged ahead into new territory. There is so much going on lately in the modern worship movement and it is quite refreshing to see the forerunners of the movement not only step into the foray again, but also raise the bar of excellence while delivering truly inspiring music. From the lyrics to the spontaneously recorded high- worship moments to their dedication to finding the right sonic tones and the attention to detail in production, this album is pure and unabridged Delirious. Before I start sounding too much like Tony Patato, Iâll let the guys in the band speak for themselves.

CM: Walk us through the transition from the early days to the new album, to where youâre at today.

Martin: Weâre really pleased with how things have developed from the early days. Weâve evolved from being a church worship team through giving ourselves a band name, to crafting how we are in public a bit more. Making an album like King of Fools, then making an album like Mezzamorphis seemed to confuse people as to what we were and what we were doing. But I believe we needed to make that album, and weâre still really proud of it, because it was crafted well and sounded good. And now all that experience has been poured into Glo. I think when people hear the record theyâll hear it in terms of songcraft, in the playing, the whole mix feels bigger to me. The journeyâs been good so far. Weâre really pleased with the songs on the new record. Thereâs a lot of emotion in it. We specifically sat in the studio together and cut a lot of the basic tracks live. A lot of what you hear is actually from the floor. Then we added a lot of stuff to make it a bit more presentable. We also did a lot of free-form playing, a lot of jamming and worshipping. There are a lot of sections on there which weâve called ãGlo in the Dark,ä where we just started playing. Weâre very pleased how it turned out.

CM: Tell us about the production of this album.

Stu G.: Itâs really important to us to reach a certain standard on whatever type of album we make. Itâs important that we have the right people around us involved in it. We used Ted T. [Tjornhom] from Nashville to coproduce it with us. The engineer was Charles Zwicky from Minneapolis. Together they really helped us create the soundscape for the record. Because of Charles we were able to lay stuff live as Martin was saying. Thatâs the first time weâve had an engineer of that level to work with. It was really releasing and freeing for us.

CM: At times on the record there are walls of sound. How will you meet the challenges of doing that live?

Stu G.: From a personal standpoint, I think weâre going to need to spend some money [laughter].

CM: What do you need to buy?

Stu G.: One of the things that Charles brought to the sessions were these pedals by a guy called Zachary Vex÷theyâre Z-Vex pedals. Charles actually worked with him on designing one. Theyâre basically a range of fuzz and overdrive pedals, but theyâve got really interesting concepts to them. One of them is called a Fuzz Probe, and itâs got a copper plate on it that works a little bit like theramin. So itâs this enormous fuzz, but itâs got a cue point that moves depending on how close you are to the copper plate. Itâs almost like a wah, but with this crazy sound. Thatâs some of the hugeness of the guitar sounds. CM: Do you need any guitars?

Stu G.: We always need guitars, like we need keyboards and drums and basses.

CM: How are you going to handle the vocals?

Martin: I think weâre going to get Jon and Stu in there· [laughter]

CM: Itâs also got a huge drum sound.

Stewart: The sounds you hear are mostly coming from the floor, there are different snares on each track. Itâs the first time weâve had an engineer thatâs really pushed us, especially on the drums. Heâs just brilliant. Iâve got a few kits, and we looked everything over. I ended up using this old Slingerland kit from 1942. We used it on Mezzamorphis. Itâs twenty-four [inches] by sixteen [inches], which is really shallow but quite big, and it has quite a flappy sound. So on songs like ãLove Falls Downä it was quite a flappy sound. We sort of managed to build this tunnel around it, and it ended up that itâs the only kick sound we use on the whole record on the end, and it was huge. So in songs like ãMy Gloriousä you can really hear the kick.

CM: How will you do that live?

Stewart: I donât think weâre going to get too precious about recreating it exactly. Iâd really like to get some V drums, because of their portability and playability. Iâd like to add a couple of those for some of the loop things that we play. Iâve also got the Flats kit that Phil reviewed [in the July/August 2000 issue of CM]. I used those in the studio to play loops, and then we sampled those in. Iâd like to try to recreate some of those sounds as well. But it was a great experience from my perspective drum-wise. To just sit down and get such great things, it was really inspiring to play.

CM: How about the bass sounds?

Jon: On the album I used a â76 Rick 2001 which has been sitting in the studio, and had never really found its place. Charles was really into it, so we put some flat round strings on it and gave it this tone that was really nice and warm, but a little bit quirky. I also used a pedal called a Woolly Mammoth quite a bit. Charles designed it for Z-Vex. It gave this big fat wall of sound, with a kind of bass tone that I was really into. The other thing we did quite a bit was overdubbing some bass keyboards on a synth. That was quite an interesting time. There was quite a learning curve; I had the letters written on the keys, the great ace keyboard player that I am. So that was a bit of a running joke. It was great to experiment a little bit out of the box. It was very refreshing.

CM: Tell us about the keyboard that you used on the album.

Tim: With the keyboard these days, most of it really gets put in the computer. We were running Logichordia alongside the Vadar, because itâs just so much stuff with all those plugins, that itâs become like a guitar player having all his pedals. I donât really know what actually goes in, because what comes out is so different.

CM: Stu G. and Martin seemed to split up the writing chores on this album.

Martin: We started the writing process in about January. We only really had a couple of songs, and I remember having a discussion with everybody saying, ãWeâve only got two or three songs here. Is this record going to happen?ä And then all of a sudden, we took a day and went away to do something. We gave ourselves two weeks to try to get our heads into the record, and all of these songs started coming. It was one of the most incredible writing times. We were demoing them ourselves to try to make sure they were working. And then of course we all got together and fleshed them out, and I think at that point we realized this was going to be a great record. When we got into the studio, it just went far out. So what started early on as a B record for us very quickly became an A+. It was amazing what happened. God was really in it. It was a big surprise for all of us, to be honest.

CM: Where did you draw your inspiration for writing?

Martin: Itâs always a lot of places, isnât it? Stu, do you want to answer this?

Stu G.: For me this time a lot of the inspiration came from songs, actually. Definitely lyrically. A really big song on the album is called ãInvestigate,ä and thereâs an interesting story about that. Martin had been in London at a guitar shop and seen a dobro that he said was amazing, and he wanted me to check it out. So I went to see it÷itâs a 1937 single-resonate÷and took it down and started playing the riff to ãInvestigate.ä You know how that is, sometimes things just come out. I left the shop with the guitar and the idea for the song, which just went from there. Iâd been mulling over the fact that you canât get away from God, even if you want to. If you go to the ends of the earth, Heâll be there. Thatâs an awesome comfort. The song developed from there.

CM: Do you think the American audience is dialed in to what you are doing?

Martin: When we come to America weâre aware that they havenât had the material as long. In England itâs been around for eight years. Here weâre trying to give a bit more of everything, whereas in England we focus on the newer stuff. The crowds have been great over here.

CM: How do you feel about the state of the worship movement right now?

Martin: Weâre hoping that whatâs happening right now is not just the next big trend. And hopefully kids wonât relate worship to a style or a band. Iâm hoping that this is going to go deeper with the kids. Weâre talking about something thatâs been happening for generations and generations: people worshipping God. Letâs not forget the bigger plot. This is not about a silly little band traveling around, but this is about the Creator. I think that weâll be praying and talking about it a lot. We want to produce good fruit, not just good records.

You may contact Mr. Zwicky via e-mail at: zmix@earthlink.net