Canadian electronic duo Delerium (Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly) have teamed up with Los Angeles dreamwave duo Magic Wands on a new single, Dream Palace. It's out now and is the second preview of Delerium's 16th studio album Exaudire, which arrives on 22 January 2027 via Metropolis Records. The first was Into The Light, with avant-garde singer Diamanda Galas.
Magic Wands are Chris and Dexy Valentine, who first connected through Myspace while living in Los Angeles and Nashville. Chris plays guitar and Dexy sings and wrote the lyrics. Both acts are on Metropolis, and Delerium had already remixed the Magic Wands song Moonshadow for the label. Bill Leeb says that when they came to record the new album they thought it might be fun to do something together.
Dexy says the music they were sent put them in a trance for about 24 hours, and they played it on loop until Chris came up with a guitar part and she found a vocal melody. The lyrics were inspired by the music and by the end scene of Contact, the 90s film based on a Carl Sagan novel.
The video stars Soraya Rose Southwick and was directed and filmed by Shahrnaz Nancy Southwick with Magic Wands. It follows a girl who opens a wooden box and finds a parallel universe inside, and it was shot in a backyard garden. Delerium had liked the Magic Wands video for Hide and asked for something similar.
Delerium started in 1987 and have been through two Juno awards and a long list of guest singers, including Sarah McLachlan on Silence, which went to number 1 in a lot of countries in 2000. A band with that history still going out of their way to try something new with a label-mate is the sort of thing I'm happy to back, and the Contact connection is a lovely detail to have behind a song called Dream Palace.
Exaudire will come as a double album on oxblood vinyl, plus CD and digital. The 12 tracks include guests Mimi Page, Inna Walters, Phildel and Jael as well as Galas and Magic Wands.
Listen and pre-order: