Conjure One
10 out of 10 - Flawless.
Saturday, September 06, 2003
Bimbo's 365 Club
|
|
After years of collaborating as Delerium, Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber finally have taken the show on the road in support of the new album Chimera. Being a long time fan I was eager to see how a live performance would come across, and looked forward to the show even more since the San Francisco stop was at Bimbo's 365 Club, a lovely 30's era venue that holds I'd guess well under 1000 people.
Fulber's solo project Conjure One opened up, showcasing many songs off last year's eponymous release. After an instrumental opener Israeli vocalist Chemda took the stage and sang "Damascus," the opening song off the record. The middle-eastern flavored vocal acrobatics of this song were seamless, matching the CD perfectly but with even more power and really showed off her voice's agility and range. Chemda performed brilliantly; alternately she was playful, moving in sort of a belly-dancing style, smiling and interacting with the crowd... then she'd turn inward, stand and sing as if almost to herself, communing with something very powerful... Chemda performed not only her own songs off of Conjure One, but also did an amazing job filling the shoes of Poe on my favorite track "The Center of the Sun," and Sinéad O'Connor's "Tears from the Moon," which I liked even better than the original! The percussionist also needs to be commended, sometimes performing triple duty playing a djembe between his knees, a dumbek underneath his arm and the congas that were set up in stands in front of him. He even slapped the cybmals with his hands! At the end of their set he took a picture of the crowd with his camera. This performance was everything I had hoped for.
Fulber pulled a double-shift and came back out for Delerium, along with his percussionist who this time played a full drum kit. Most of the vocals were handled by Kristy Thrisk and a new vocalist for this tour Shelly Harland, who couldn't have been more different than each other. Kristy had her hair in high braided ponytails and wore a striped girlish tanktop and miniskirt with big boots-- she stomped around and was cute and bratty, very much in contradiction to her compelling and other-wordly voice. Harland was more subdued, in a simple but elegant white slip dress and top, and while she didn't move around a lot she put on a great performance as well, displaying a perfect ratio of power and grace. The two took turns singing and also sang together on some songs, belting out wonderful renditions of the Sarah McLachlan track off Karma "Silence," and the Leigh Nash tracks "Innocente" (from Poem) and "Run For It" from the new record. This is no small feat. I was afraid that not having the all of the original vocalists on hand for their respective songs would really detract from the show, but Kristy and Shelly were fantastic. Chemda came back to the stage for "Forgotten Worlds," a song from Karma that on the record uses Lisa Gerrard samples, and this was the only song of the show that didn't blow me away. I think I just love Lisa Gerrard too much that I can't accept hearing anyone else singing her parts... but it was still good. I would have loved Thrisk to perform "Enchanted," a song off Karma where her range gets completely insane-- I've never heard anyone sing so competently at both a low and high register. But there was one song in particular I didn't know the name of where she was really able to show off her range-- looking at online discussion of the show I believe it was "Flowers Become Screens" off of Semantic Spaces-- and this was completely unbelievable.
After the show the band members greeted folks in the lobby and it was pretty easy to catch them outside near the buses as well. I thanked Chemda and my friend talked to Kristy, while I saw other people talking to Bill Leeb. It made an already great show even better seeing how nice everyone was. I highly recommend catching this tour to anyone interested in ambient/ethereal/electronic music, even if they don't follow Delerium.
|