I spent the past few hours in a rabbit hole spurred by randomly pulling Chick Corea & Gary Burton's "Duet" record off the shelf, noticing that it was recorded at the Delphian School in Sheridan, Oregon and wondering WTF is that? Here’s a thread on what I learned so far.
The Delphian School is a K-12 boarding school northwest of Salem affiliated with the Church of Scientology. They promote something called "Study Tech" — by most accounts a bogus pedagogical method developed by L. Ron Hubbard.
The Sheridan campus seems to be their flagship operation, but Delphian Schools have also operated in Sacramento and Santa Monica, and Study Tech has been implemented in a number of other private schools in the US and internationally, both Scientology-affiliated and not. Both the Delphian Schools and Study Tech seem to be in decline.
"Duet' was recorded over three days in October 1978 at the Delphian School in Oregon. Corea stayed on a few days longer to record his next three solo albums: "Delphi" I, II, and III.
The Discogs entry for "Delphian Foundation" only lists three other recordings, all unreleased: a 1979 Corea/Gary Peacock duo; a 1979 Lee Konitz/Martial Solal duo; and an undated solo set by the pianist Mario Feninger.
Chick Corea joined Scientology after reading L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics" in 1968. He went on to produce a number of records inspired by Scientology, including contributing to "Space Jazz," Hubbard's bombastically bad companion album to the novel "Battlefield Earth."
I find it remarkable that Corea never met Hubbard, someone he clearly idolized, despite being one of the more reputable adherents active in the years before Hubbard passed away in 1986. Their collaboration on “Space Jazz” and other projects was apparently via correspondence only.
Corea lived the last 15 years of his life in Clearwater, Florida, a suburb of Tampa that the Church of Scientology attempted to take over outright in the 1970s — i.e., "Operation Normandy."
Scientology is currently the majority property owner in the Clearwater downtown core, and considers the city its "spiritual headquarters."
An odd side note to this thread: In the early 80s, a new method of mastering vinyl records was developed in Germany, in many ways superior to traditional lacquer mastering (the master is the original from which all copies are made).
About thirty Direct Metal Mastering lathes were produced by the German company Neumann. Production ceased as CDs became the dominant medium. Some machines were modified to cut lacquers, while others were dismantled for parts. There are currently twelve commercially operating DMM lathes in the world. The Church of Scientology owns at least two of the remaining machines.
So, next time you have to wait 14 months for your favorite artist's next LP to ship, remember to save a little piece of your rage for the ghost of L. Ron Hubbard.
"The Church of Scientology (aka, the Scientologists) have at least two DMM lathes in their mastering studio (which is most likely located in their Golden Era Productions facility in Gilman Hot Springs / San Jacinto, California) - but they do not work on projects other than their own (they transcribe L. Ron Hubbard’s speeches onto disc and place them into time capsules along with hand-cranked turntables. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction).
"Europadisk in New York City (based first in Manhattan, and then moving in 2000 to Long Island City) was the last mastering studio in the USA to offer Direct Metal Mastering on a commercial basis - but it ceased operation in 2005, and its lathe and other DMM mastering equipment were sold to the Scientologists at auction."
@buffyleigh I know! I learned about this when I was working on an obnoxiously long recording I wanted to put on LP a few months back. DMM allows for tighter grooves, hence a longer side than is possible with lacquer LPs without loss of fidelity. The project is currently on the back burner.
@other_ghosts Bjork reissued her albums as DMM at some point, I got Medulla when it was first released so it was a normal price, now it's like $150-500 on Discogs. DMM sounds great and I'd choose it over a regular pressing any day if the same price, but it's not $500 good...
@streetscientist Do you know if Sheridan was already a Scientology hub in the 70s? Or was LRH just looking for cheap property and some poor people to test out his methods? If it wasn't a hub then, I imagine it must be by now.