By Conjure One, 2005

With Conjure One being Rhys Fulber's (Frontline Assembly & Delerium) solo debut, he expands upon the promise of Karma with a rapturous blend of lush textures, hauntingly beautiful melodies and softly curved electrobeats. Nettwerk. 2005.Serene singers and lush electronic textures and strings are often a prescription for smothering romanticism and overwrought pop-treacle.

Rhys Fulber, the force behind Conjure One, succumbed to that with his other band, Delerium, on their last album, Chimera ." But Fulber's post-Delerium project, Conjure One, though using the same formula, has a darker, sometimes more foreboding edge. On their long awaited second CD, superstar singer Sinead O'Connor is gone in favor of a bevy of lesser known voices, but little else has changed. That's not bad although "Endless Dream" echoes "Center of the Sun" from the previous album perhaps a bit too closely with yearning lyrics rising to cathedral heights in a soul-haunted chorus.

The vocal credit on the tune is Jane, but unless someone has perfected human cloning, it's actually the singer-songwriter Poe, a hold-over from the last CD. She has the kind of warm crystal clear alto that makes even the awkward lyrics of the title track sound like heavenly entreaties. Joanna Stevens eschews words all together when she powers through a Middle-Eastern derived wordless hymn on the ecstatic grooves of "Dying Light." Conjure One almost becomes a different project, --one that recalls the glistening electro-pop of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark-- when Rhys Fulber sings on "Beyond Being" and a cover of The Buzzcock's "I Believe".

But singers Tiff Lacey and Chemda bring it back to the Conjure One sound. From the orchestral-electronica of "Pilgrimage" to the poignant intimacy of "One Word," Extraordinary Ways is an album that seduces easily. -- John Diliberto

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