Can you imagine what exactly a delirious demon might sound like? Maybe the closing scene of Disney’s Fantasia pops into your head, where a towering black god conjures dead spirits to the tune of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, but even that moment doesn’t approach the shear sonic chaos I assume would accompany a full scale breakout from the underworld. In all likelihood, no other piece of music ever written will encapsulate the absolute terror of these unknown evils like Turkish composer İlhan Mimaroğlu’s masterwork “Wings of the Delirious Demon.” “Wings” is the fifteen minute centerpiece of Mimaroğlu’s 1971 album of the same name that to this day remains one of the most captivating and utterly bewildering works of electro-acoustic manipulation laid to tape, and considering he was a contemporary of men like Edgard Varèse, that’s saying something.
The full length of this track consists of heavily manipulated clarinet playing that Mimaroğlu twists into squawks, metallic pings, deep growls, ear-splitting static, and literally every frequency in between. It really is hard to describe how many completely off the wall noises Mimaroğlu coaxes out of his clarinet, but I’m not exaggerating when I say nearly all of the bleeps and bloops crammed into this track have become staples of many respectable electronic manipulators active today. No words can quite describe the insanity, both audibly and creatively, of this piece, so do yourself a favor and check out this lost classic of electronic madness.
