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Take one overly-hot early summer’s evening, add in a particularly small school hall and mix it all up with 150 worshippers and you’ve got yourself something special. It just so happens that these are the raw ingredients of this writer’s first memory of the five guys that would go on to form Delirious. It’s a particularly good recollection too: it was 1994 and Celine Dion ruled the charts, the hall was half empty, the sense of God was magnetic. Songs switched while worshipers swerved between euphoria and astonishment. The silences were ecstatic and the noise was sublime. As for the band, there’s not much I remember. It was too dark on stage.
My first experience of Martin Smith, Jon Thatcher, Stu Garrard, Stew Smith and Tim Jupp set the tone for all that followed. As Delirious has grown their role of worship leaders has changed, taking in all manner of variations, but at the heart, there’s really very little that’s different from back then. Close your eyes while their music plays, open up and you’ll hear the sound of a bunch of worshippers enjoying a journey. Whether it’s in front of six-figure crowds or at the same school hall that still plays host to their local church, Delirious exist with one aim in mind: to get people connecting with God, no matter how wide the gulf or intimate the obsession.
Yet some find it possible to get a little monochrome about a band like Delirious. Which camp to they fall into: worship leaders or rock band? After all, they come with a backroom packed full of staff: managers, crew, publicists, distributors. Yet their origins, their message and their delivery are all so explicit it’s impossible to have a conversation about the band without the ‘w’ word making a headline appearance. Yet to focus on all this business is to miss the point. With Delirious, it’s all about connection.
It all started back 1992 when producer/engineer Martin Smith (vocals and guitars) teamed up with studio owner Tim Jupp (keyboards) and graphic designer Stew Smith (drums).
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