elphic have just come off stage at a gig in Tokyo, Japan. They
D
haven’t slept for three days and have eaten just once during that
same stretch. There are journalists scrabbling to interview them and
fans screaming in a fl urry of outstretched arms. The synth player,
Rick Boardman, apologises for being “slightly drunk”.
The other three band members — James Cook (vocals), Matt Cocksedge (guitar)
and Dan Theman (drums) — are sweaty and grinning, after nearly an hour of
explosive Delphic action on stage. They’ve just delivered a non-stop onslaught of
techno-infused sonic wizardry, including singles such as ‘Counterpoint’, ‘Doubt’
and ‘This Momentary’ from the album, blended into a tornado of driving beats,
lush melodies and towering, improvised synthscapes.
With this Manchester four-piece though, you never hear the same live show twice.
And that’s just how they want it.
“It’s like when Daft Punk play live and do that version of ‘Harder, Better, Faster,
Stronger’ mixed with ‘Around The World,’” says Rick later, after the fuss has died
down. “It’s like a new tune each time. That’s what we aim to do when we play live.
Otherwise it’d be boring for us.”
Delphic quip that the reason they play continuously, serving up song-laden blasts
of technotronica based on their debut album ‘Acolyte’ — out now through
Chimeric/Polydor — is because they “can’t be arsed to talk between songs”. But
there’s more to it than that.
“We’d all much rather watch a band such as Underworld or The Chemical Brothers
play than we would, say, The Killers, where the pauses between songs breaks up
the atmosphere,” explains Rick. “That’s why our gigs end up being more like a
rave.”
If you haven’t heard of Delphic yet, you soon will. Since their debut single
‘Counterpoint’ was released by R&S Records in April last year, the excitement
about this troupe from Castlefi eld, in Manchester, has been building. But the
Delphic story really started back in 2007, when the band formed from the ashes of
an indie-dance group called Snowfi ght In The City Centre and hatched a plot to
“make Manchester dance again”.
Rick claims they took a leaf out of Brian Eno’s book of topsy-turvy music-making
ideologies and decided to turn things on their head.
“We started out putting all the ideas for our songs onto our laptops,” says Rick.
“Then, once we’d worked it all out electronically, we added the live vocals, guitars,
synths and drums.”
Early Delphic live shows, at the beginning of 2008, were often in illegal venues
around Manchester. The band, bored by the venues on the city’s gig circuit, would
“tell a few people” and pack out a small space with 30 or 40 fans going mad to their
prototype tunes.
“Or we’d sometimes get a generator and our equipment out into a fi eld in the
middle of nowhere and do a gig there,” says Rick. “We’d also squeeze as many
people as we could into our rehearsal space in the Night & Day Café.”
Ecstasy Rush
Delphic are in awe of 1980s era New Order, despite the fact that none of the band
members, all aged 24, apart from drummer Dan who’s “a couple of years older”,
were actually born when ‘Ceremony’ and ‘Blue Monday’ were fi rst released. They
also love Orbital and Underworld even though they were too young to hear their
records played in clubs in the early-’90s. But taking these infl uences and
channeling them into hook-laden songs drenched in lush melodies, laced with
guitars and often underpinned by driving beats, Delphic put the fi rst plans for
their album together, while also drawing inspiration from a range of contemporary
THE FUTURE IS
techno producers and labels.
“We really got into the music coming out on Kompakt Records just before we
started working on our album,” says Rick. “We also fell in love with Joris Voorn
because of all the synths he uses and when we heard his stuff for the fi rst time we
DELPHIC
were like, ‘Oh my god, that’s exactly the sound we want to do!’”
Another inspiration is house producer Tony Lionni “because of the 1990s euphoric
feel” to his music.
“We didn’t want to make Ed Banger-style electro stuff,” says Rick. “We wanted to
make dance music that can create an emotion rather than just being a hard beat
for someone that’s fucked on drugs.
“We love it when dance music builds and creates that ecstasy rush in you. There’s
this Joris Voorn remix of Robert Babicz’s ‘Dark Flower’ that does that, although in
a more subtle way. That was a real infl uence on our sound. Orbital do that;
Underworld do that too; and that’s what we want to do.”
That’s exactly what Delphic have been doing since the middle of 2008 — and it
hasn’t gone unnoticed. In a music industry crippled by the fallout from the digital
www.djmag.com
037
DJ481.delphic.indd 37 30/11/09 17:04:58
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132