Description
This suite of sonic essays examines aspects of an American fundamentalist deliverance ministry. The ministry is predicated upon the unorthodox belief that Christians can be inhabited by demons. The evil spirits manifest themselves in the form of physical and mental illness, spiritual and emotional afflictions, addictions and phobias, delinquency, inappropriate dispositions and attitudes, the bad fruit of ancestral iniquities passed down from one generation to another, and the inhabitation of electronic equipment.

Deliverance is achieved chiefly through prayers – spoken aloud either in English or tongues (glossolalia) – that entreat the demon to depart. The vindictive and recalcitrant entity is heard to resist eviction and, through the mouth of its host, to remonstrate angrily with the deliverer with screams and invectives before being cast out. Each demon is summoned by name, which name represents a particular infirmity that it inflicts; for example, one called ‘Catatonic’ stupefies the victim.

The source material for the essays is derived from cassette-tape recordings of church meetings and radio interviews, and also protracted services of deliverance conducted in the home with many adults and children in attendance. Recordings of hymns, either sung by believers or played on a midi keyboard, often accompany the deliverance service. ‘O, the blood of Jesus’ (the sonorous backdrop to the End-Time Deliverance Ministry’s services) serves not only to promote an atmosphere of worship but also as a powerfully active agent in the process of dispossession; demons flee when they hear it, deliverers insist. The aim of the compositions is to clarify and intensify the essence of several recordings that explore the practice of deliverance.

Boyce and Boice (Electronic-Malfunctioning Demons)
Boyce and Boice are two demons that interfere with electronic equipment, such as a telephone, computer, printer, television, and motorcar, causing it to malfunction. The demons can be exorcised, in the name of Jesus. Boisé (Fr: woody) was used by a French-speaking guide to Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville of the US Army on seeing the verdant woodland on which site Fort Boise, Idaho, which was established by the Hudson Bay Company in 1834.

Lyric
Deliverer: Boyce and Boice. Boyce and Boice. Boyce and Boice. Boyce and Boice. Their job is to mess with your electronic gear, whatever it is: whether its telephone, or radio, or whatever.

Radio Interviewer 1: Demons come down the telephone line and screw-up our computers.

D: Electronic-malfunctioning demons.

Radio Interviewer 2: It’s a demonic spirit, which, uh, effects, uh, electronical equipment.

D: Telephone demons can come right across the telephone line.

RI1: If I went to a porno site on my computer, right, get a whole lot of demons download …

D: Oh, absol … Oh, yea! The computer just jams up; the printer jams up. My printer stops working. … commanded them to leave my equipment, in the name of Jesus, and everything starts working again. They cast out – they command – Boyce and Boice to leave … and everything starts working OK. You know the demon has gone when you no longer have the problem. You can’t explain most things in deliverance. It’s, you know, it’s not in the Bible … But it works! Boyce and Boice are two demons that we know by experience. Maybe a million – I don’t know ­– demons. Boyce and Boice just happen to be two of them.
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RI1: That the two demons that are responsible for this both have names: one’s called Boyce and the other’s called Boice.

D: Boyce and Boice.

RI1: Ah! Boice’s the other one.

D: Right, ah!

RI1: I see.
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RI2: I learned about this one demon spirit they call Bosie.

D: Boice and Boyce. B O I C E and B O Y C E. B O I S E and B O Y C E … like Boise, Idaho.


Personnel: Anonymous deliverance ministers, preacher, and radio broadcasters, ‘demons’, and John Harvey.

Instrumentation: Adobe Audition CS6 and Apple MacBook Pro OS X 10.8.

Source: Samples derived from recordings on the open-access online archive of the End-Time Deliverance Ministry (accessed February 2012); birdsong captured at Gregynog Hall, Newtown, Powys, May 26, 2012.