Customer Reviews

Delirium Cordia

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

It's impossible for me to listen to this music without simply shaking my head in utter amazement.

To even be able to imagine, let alone effectively conjure, such a dementedly beautiful soundscape is beyond comprehension.

Obviously, it builds on past forays into--what? I don't know, not being entirely familiar with the previous efforts of this remarkable construct emanating from the mind of Mike Patton. But there are snippets of metal, jazz, electronica, horror movie soundtrack--all welded together in a unique sonic signature: Dark, noxious, strangely beautiful, mesmeric, and ghostly.

I think I catch the vibe of surgery as somehow alchemic, violative, invasive, yet essentially humane.

As is this music.

Dangerous, vital, indespensible, oddly compelling.

What I want to know is who listens to this kind of music, and when? Delirium Cordia definitively isn't an album you put on for a party, or to rock out to in your car like Mike Patton's other band Tomahawk. Really, it isn't something to play at all in the presence of others, no matter how impolite the company.

This album, just 1 track, 74 minutes long, is isolated, deranged, and an absolute masterpiece of complex sound and mood. Fantomas' last album, The Director's Cut, took the band into film score by doing short covers of famous pieces like "Rosemary's Baby" and "The God Father," but this one delves fully into an original full length composition that really might best be suitable for something directed by Cronenberg or Aronovsky. And that's the best way to listen to it, eyes closed, alone, imagining your own movie to accompany this piece of music-and the acid-blasted landscapes of auditory imagery aroused belong in a genre busting horror film; or perhaps this is just the music that the pathologist hums in his head while performing an autopsy.

Delirium Cordia reminds me of the paintings of Henry Darger, with its haunting, disturbed beauty, moments of innocence subverted, and violent storms constantly threatening to erupt. And they do erupt, but not with the level of nearly un-listenable cacophony found in other works by Mike Patton, such as Adult Themes for Voice.

Delirium Cordia is the perfect mood-setter to listen to while writing fiction and poetry (if what you write leans towards the misanthropic, the violent, the introspective.) And it leaves me more convinced than ever that Mike Patton at some point will be approached by an intelligent director to score a daring and unconventional film (or videogame.)

Finally, the art. Nothing else by Fantomas (or any other Patton project since the first Mr. Bungle album) has had such lush production values in the cover art. This is the best way to stop music piracy--by making the complete work a coherent piece of art, as these richly produced color photos and quotations mesh perfectly with the music. To have only the music hidden away on your hard drive would be to diminish the overall experience of enjoying Delirium Cordia. The prickle of gooseflesh I felt slipping off the black protective cardboard sleeve for the first time and seeing the chilling image on the cover (let it be a secret) greatly heightened my apprehension about what I was going to hear as I put the disk into the player. A sterile download bar is no replacement. This disk is the best thing to show up in my mailbox in months.

If you've liked the Melvins, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, or if you know none of those bands but like dark film scores and experimental music, stop reading and BUY THIS ALBUM NOW.

This is one of the best albums to come out in a long time. I will not bother comparing it to any other album, because it stands alone as a testament to what a truly great album can be. When I popped this one into the cd player in my car as I drove home from the record store, my mind was immediately flooded with images of old hospitals, grimy sugical instruments and a spiritual unease. I was hooked, and I intend that pun. On the back of the cd case, there is a quote: "Like the surgeon, the composer slashes open the body of his fellow man, removes his eyes, empties his abdomen of organs, hangs him up on a hook, holding up to the light all of the body's palpitating treasures, sending a burst of light into its' innermost depths. - Richard Selzer, MD." This quote sums up the album completely, as there is an overwhelming dark theme composed of vocalizations, sound effects, and instrumentation interspersed with glorious choral vignettes, suggesting that the pain and suffering of the patient is temporarily alleviated by medicine, unconciousness, or a spiritual intervention. There is an almost constant feeling of impending doom, and then sometimes, the doom reveals itself with a cacophonic dirge, as though the gates of Hell had just opened and a legion of infernal creatures were coming just to torment one person lying under sedation on an operating table. Who knows what horrors lurk in the depths of an anaethestic-induced nightmare? I think Mike Patton has opened an operating room door and the sign reads "Delirium Cordia".

Fantomas' Delirium Cordia: it's dark, scary, beautiful, and intriguing. Comprised of one long song (74 minutes and no track breaks!,) Delirium Cordia really requires the listener to take it all in at once. Like the difference between seeing a film in a theater and on TV, the effect just isn't quite the same if you break it up. I know - reading that it's one long track for well over an hour doesn't seem appealing, and before I listened to it I even considered burning a copy with track breaks just so I could jump around, but once you give it a spin you'll understand.

The film analogy above is fitting - the only comparison that makes sense with regard to Delirium Cordia is a film. And really, it's more fitting that it's compared to the score of a film. Delirium Cordia isn't so much "music" as it is a collection of sounds - you won't find any significantly hummable tunes anywhere within that 74 minute time span. What you will find is a harrowing journey representative of . . . something having to do with surgery. Or maybe death. Or maybe life after death. I'm not sure - and Fantomas gives you very few clues to go on. What you will experience are Fantomas staples - speed riffing; ominous plodding basslines; Mike Patton's trademark vocal pyrotechnics - and a host of disturbing sounds inspired by (and possibly sourced from) the operating room environment.

Keep that word "disturbing" in mind - because that's exactly what this album is. This is seriously creepy stuff - between blasts of frantic Fantomas energy, you'll hear doctors discussing procedures, medical equipment, and other unidentifiable noises, and periodically the band will break in with a shocking amount of noise. Other times, Fantomas explores the ambience, allowing the listener to settle in - but knowing Fantomas, you won't trust them because you know that peak of energy is coming. And it does - over and over, and you never expect it, no matter how prepared you try to make yourself.

To top it all off, the album comes packaged in a glossy black slipcase. Slide that off and you'll see the front of the liner notes bearing the slightly bloodied hands of a surgeon crossed over his chest. Inside of a classy, unusual dark-tinted jewelcase is a gorgeously printed booklet . . . but inside lies imagery you will be recalling as you listen to the album. A face is distorted and warped by a series of clamps pulling back the lips of a patient - why, we don't know; a stream of bloody water flows from an enormous wound; a patient's chest is cracked open to reveal a massive tumor; and best of all is an eye being lifted out of the eye socket of an organ donor. These are all real photos, the work of Max Aguilera as published in his book, The Sacred Heart. Disturbing and disgusting as they are, they add a dimension to the music that makes the proceedings that much more real and important. This isn't just a gross-out session by the band - what their point is isn't entirely clear, but it's not a joke. Maybe they're just saying, "Hey, take care of yourself - this is what happens when you die."

The most I can make is that what we hear is supposed to be the last hour of someone's life. That's all the meaning I can take from this. Like the best films and the best books, it doesn't tell you everything. In fact, it hardly tells anything at all - the mystery is bigger than the music itself. But that keeps me coming back - over the past few days since I first listened to it, it has rarely been long out of my head. I can say, however, that when you make it through those 74 minutes, the end is absolutely not what you might expect. I won't spoil it for you - you need to experience it for yourself. I won't even tell you my reaction, because I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I will say this - there's nearly 15 minutes of what sounds like a breathing pump and possibly the sound of blood flowing through veins. And then . . . you figure it out. I can guarantee you it's not what you're thinking it is.

I have to admit that it took me a couple of listens before really bonding with this album. It is disturbing, discomforting, and takes you someplace where your darkest, most maddening nightmares originate, but allthewhile is a brilliant musical composition that takes music to the very brink of sanity and coherence, teeters as if to jump, then recoils back into (relative) lucidity. It is a piece that can best be described as the musical equivalent to being trapped in a morgue at night and keeping yourself entertained until morning dissecting the corpses, who then awaken and attack you with your own scalpel. Because this composition has been subject to so much criticism, I make the analogy that Mike Patton is the Arnold Schönberg of our time. Schönberg, whose compositions many of his early critics rejected, also pushed the musical boundaries with pieces that conformed to neither key nor time. He is an indisputable genius, and anyone that agrees with this statement is probably as fascinated by Mike Patton as I am, and would undoubtedly enjoy the journey into the musical hellscape that is Delirium Cordia.

The audio equivilent to a david lynch film (Eraserhead or Mullholand Dr.), DELIRIUM CORDIA is a psychological thriller\drama. (the hospital sounds are "reality", the music is what is going on in the patients head. notice that the last words being sung are "I'm dying.") It also seems to be a commentary about the "death" of vinyl (hence the record pops, scratches, and the actual "mucic" lasting around 50 minutes, the lengh of a typical lp). But most importantly, it is the best album of 2004 (top noch production, heavy instrumentation). Give the public a few years to realise just how groundbreaking this little disc is.

I got this the day after it's release and didn't get around to it till yesterday. It was the first free 74 minutes I got, so I took it. This one follows in the Fantomas tradition, but at the same time, it doesn't. Every Fantomas release has been a soundtrack of some sort; the first being a soundtrack to a comic book, the second was literally movie theme songs, and the latest is a soundtrack to a surgery. Until now, Fantomas has been known for a schizophrenic, highly caffeinated sound. Delirium Cordia is pretty darn mellow when you compare it to the previous two albums. In fact, this-as another reviewer stated-is more like a Mike Patton solo album than a Fantomas album. It's got that long, Zornish "nothing" sound to it at times. This will turn alot of people off. And I'll admit that even though I would prefer Fantomas to sound like Fantomas, I enjoyed this album. It won't get alot of play though. First, you have to be in the mood for it. Second, you have to have an uninterrupted 74 minutes to spare. When this situation arises, you'll be in for an interesting experience. While listening, you can't help but map out a whole movie/scenario around what you are listening to, and that's quite fun if I might add. If you want to get down and boogie, I'd turn around and run away. Listen to it with headphones.

And I meant that. Contrary to what some here have said, this IS music, and highly accomplished music at that. No matter what your tastes are, or what your opinion turns out to be, if you listen to this album only once, you cannot accurately review it. Listen to it twice, and listen to it closely. Even the crackles on the fake record playing throughout will change tempo and thickness with the music; what at fist sounded like 40 or 41 different nearly unrelated segments will be revealed to be interwoven variations on three or four main melodies, in which everything from hard rock to jazz to the flat-out orchestral and harmonic takes the stage. Sounds hide within sounds, Patton's voice constantly (not occasionally) singing in the background, foreground, mid-ground, mixing with the band's brilliant and ever-changing insturmentation. Yes, it has precursor's in "The Bends" and "Violenza Domestica," but so did the first two Fantomas albums; this kind of music and scenario are what come naturally and instinctively to Patton.

But even all this is a digression. If you love great music, and can listen to it with attention and subtlety, you will, as always with Patton and Co., find great treasures throughout. This is a perfect ambient record, as the truly ambient moments --periods of intense sound layering -- are as structured as the non-ambeint moments, and therefore do not commit the usual ambient sin of going on for way too long; it is a perfect nightmare horror record -- or, as my wife, who is not a Fantomas fan but LOVES this record, put it, "It sounds like the soundtrack to every bad dream you've ever had, or every truly creepy horror movie you've ever heard".

In Delirium Cordia, at last, Patton fuses his obsession for ornate muisical structures with his obsession for truly bizarre melodies, coming up with one rich, creepy, sad, violent (and yes, even funny) piece of music.

Buy it; listen to it; you'll love it.

If you're a Patton fan, you probably already have this and are just checking reviews out of curiousity and to slam people who don't like the album.....but, if not, here's the best help I can give you. This album is much closer to the first Fantomas than the second. For me Fantomas works much better when they're forced to work in the confines of some structure(like other peoples' songs on Director's Cut). The album is a good idea, and it seems that Patton wanted to spit in the face of boring, mundane, everyone-does-it song structures(like the debut). But this would probably be a favorite of only a small percentage of even Mr. Bungle fans. A great idea. Great film score potential. Nothing too memorable. I can't think of one 'passage' from memory. I'll keep listening because I want to like it. But Fantomas has proven themselves an ideal coverband, having so much freshness to offer already captivating songs--I wish they would continue that unless I hear more cohesive independant songlike structures. I respect the creativity of a one track CD, but I wouldn't want to have to listen to RV every time I played angel dust--and sometimes I just want to hear the last song on California if you know what I mean. In sum it is entertaining, but yields to Faith no more/Bungle.
ps the 14/15 of you who spent the time to click 'no' for helpfulness on the review that gave 5 stars but said "if you like this you are a big fat dummy" are either inobservant, illogical, or painfully literal with personal time management issues.

I bought this album when it first came out, at a time when my only other exposure to Fantomas was their brilliant and accessible Director's Cut. After first listen to Surgical Sound Specimens from the Museum of Skin, I remember agreeing with a review I had read, one calling it "a Pink Floyd album, but without the music." I suspected the entire CD was a joke. In Fantomas' defense, I was so anxious to hear a song, lyrics, a rhythm, or a discernible melody that I wasn't paying attention to what I actually was hearing. It became an album I put on only when I wasn't in the mood for music, but just wanted some sort of aural stimulation other than the hum of a fan or refrigerator.

Have you ever wondered why it is that people say "this one takes repeated listens to finally enjoy"? If you're actively listening to it, it's not as if you miss things. Certain frequencies do not sometimes elude us; it's the same music every time you put in the CD, and you're the same you. So why the repeated listens? I think it has more to do with learning when certain music is appropriate. The more you've experienced an album, the better you can gauge when you'll like it, the less likely you are to put it on and mistakenly expect certain words, a certain rhythm, or a certain melody. You learn to tweak yourself to be able to enjoy a stimulation, rather than trying hopelessly to mold the stimulation to fit you; that certainly was the case with me and this album.

Perhaps not everybody will ever be in the mood for this one, then, but the other reviews are testament enough to its depth. We can't discard its musical merit. If you find yourself unable to enjoy this one, wait until you get really introspective or at the very least bored, then put it on in the background. If it gets to 35 minutes through, and you still don't feel like letting it play, at least you've got a better understanding of when you should try again.

Not everybody will come around, but this CD is creative, expressive, and thought-provoking enough for it to be well worth the wait for those that do.