Deltasound - Enemy/Our Machines

  by John Clarkson

published: 25 / 7 / 2012

Label: Deltasound
Format: CDS

intro

Ethereal, but unsettling latest single from Newcastle-based indie rock group, Deltasound

Deltasound are an indie band from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which includes in its line-up Jonjo McNeill (vocals, lead guitar) and Adrian Huggins (bass guitar), both of whom have written for Pennyblackmusic. Its other members are Craig Hutchinson (drums) and Rob Payne (keyboards). The band formed in late 2006 after McNeill returned to Newcastle having spent some years living in London, and began life as a dance/rock outfit. It created an early blueprint for itself making thunderous, anthemic music that shoved McNeill’s charismatic, cigarette-tarred vocals to the fore. This extended across two EPs, ‘EP1’ (2007) and ‘EP2’ (2008), and two singles, ‘Dust Can Explode’ (2009) and ‘Probably/Something’ (2011). Perhaps it is the influence of fairly recent recruit Payne into the band. Perhaps too they are simply starting to shift beyond from their original parameters, but their latest single, ’Enemy/Our Machines’, which precedes their debut album, ‘When the Attack Warnings Sound’, which is due out in late August, has a different focus. Other than as an occasional low soft wail, McNeill’s vocals are almost entirely absent for the first minute and half of the six minute ‘Enemy’. When they do appear, they are muffled, deliberately kept low in the mix beneath Payne’s hazy banks of electronica and McNeill and Huggins’ cascading, eerily beautiful guitars. The music pushed forwards by Hutchinson’s rock steady drum moves slowly upwards, but it is only in the last minute of 'Enemy' that the guitars explode cathartically into the whirlwind sound of the Deltasound of the past. With a chilling lyric from McNeill about protecting yourself from an unseen enemy, ‘Enemy’ has an ethereal richness, but combines this with a sense of unsettling menace and profound sorrow. ‘Your Machine’ also has a similar scarred sense of beauty, merging its glorious, spiralling guitars and keyboards again with a brooding sinisterness and a slow, mournful lyric from McNeill about political duplicity. ‘Enemy/Your Machine’ is a challenging, but compelling single of contrasts that promises much for ‘When the Attack Warnings Sound’.

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