Showing posts with label tribal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tribal. Show all posts

Saturday, May 3, 2008

The Empty Quarter - Delirium

This was almost a "someone beat me to it" post; Rho-Xs did indeed post it last June, but his download link has expired, so I can offer up my own rip, inferior though it probably is. Youth (ex-Killing Joke, represented on this blog so far by his recordings with Brilliant) and Ben Watkins (Juno Reactor) first teamed up to record an album called The Empty Quarter (soon here) in 1983 as the official soundtrack from the play Street Captives by Jonathan Moore. For their second collaboration, 1986's Delirium, they adopted The Empty Quarter as their band name. Like their first album it's all instrumental, but with a greater focus on rhythms. The beats run from tribal to industrial to gothic funk a la Brilliant (unsurprisingly) with several guest musicians filling out the sound. The full performing credits are:
Ben Watkins: keyboards, guitars, programming
Youth: keyboards, bass programming
Dave Heath: flute
Kate St. John: oboe, sax
Jake Le Mesurier: percussion, drums
Chris Bell: drums
'Mainframe'-John and Murray: Greengate programming
'Ranking Seymour': voice
Guy 'Thumb' Pratt: bass
This is one of several "techno-worldbeat" albums that came out in the late 80s/early 90s that in my opinion are classics. More albums in that category that other bloggers have posted are:

Anne Dudley and Jaz Coleman: Songs from the Victorious City
Eric Random and the Bedlamites: Ishmael
Saqqara Dogs: Thirst and World Crunch

But the point of this post is The Empty Quarter's Delirium: get it here or here.