Getting To Know: Delphic

When musicians retreat to a rural cottage or cabin to write an album, the results are often pastoral and mellow. Think Led Zeppelin’s third album, Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, or The Band’s Music from Big Pink. But when Manchester band Delphic decamped to England’s Lake District to spend three weeks in a cottage without TV, Internet or central heating, they somehow emerged with a full-on rocktronica record. During the songwriting sojourn for its debut, Acolyte, Delphic coined a curious doublespeak motto: “The guitar is dead; long live the guitar.”

“It was a reaction against the dull drudgery of guitar music,” says bespectacled guitarist Matt Cocksedge, calling from a tour stop in Australia. “The guitar was dead—killed by so much imitation and lack of imagination. Rather than use it as the basis of a song, we used it for the decoration on top. So, for that reason, ‘Long live the guitar!’”

With its strobing synths, fiber-optic rhythms, and neon whooshes, Acolyte is the sound of modern Britpop-gone-techno. Like their northern dance-rock forefathers—New Order, Electronic, and Sub Sub—these Mancunians augment electronica sounds with strategic deployments of guitar, bass, and drums. For instance, vocalist James Cook uses a Fender bass to thread a subtle riff through the synthetic throb of the first single, “This Momentary.” And when Cocksedge cuts loose on the keening “Submission,” his axe’s anguished growl is an effective counterweight to Richard Boardman’s bubbles of synthesizer.

In concert, the trio and touring drummer Matt Hadley multitask over stringed instruments and lecterns of drum pads and keyboards. The cumulative effect, bolstered by a power-surge light show, is that of an Acid House event. Indeed, Delphic built its live reputation by staging illicit raves with a portable power generator. The only incongruous element is the musicians themselves. Rather than wearing regulation rave gear such as sneakers, jeans, and hoodies, the trio favors plaited trousers and button-down Oxfords. On the surface, Delphic seems more Brooks Brothers than Chemical.

Even more suprising? Until recently, Cocksedge and Boardman were guilty of producing exactly the kind of generic indie-guitar rock they abhor. The two longtime friends were once members of the highly touted band Snowfight in the City Centre. But during a 2007 tour supporting Kings of Leon, Cocksedge and Boardman grew disenchanted.

“We realized that we didn’t really like the music we were making,” the guitarist sheepishly admits. “We’d hear a song on the radio and go, ‘Ah, that’s cool—let’s do something a bit like that.’ It wasn’t the music we really wanted to make.”

Around the same time, Boardman and Cocksedge met Cook and discovered they shared influences such as Kraftwerk, Prodigy, Daft Punk, Radiohead, and Doves. The newly formed trio resolved it would never again compromise its work. But that ethos was soon put to the test when the group sent a demo to Tom Rowlands of Chemical Brothers to audition him as a possible producer.

“Here we were, young lads, working—albeit via email—with one of our heroes,” recalls Cocksedge. “The thing is, it didn’t sound like the song we had in our heads. It was Tom’s version of our song. So we had to make a tough call there.”

Moving on from Rowlands, when Delphic later hooked up with producer Ewan Pearson, it emerged with an album that was third in the BBC’s influential Sound of 2010 list, an annual poll of 165 music critics and movers and shakers in the business. Capitalizing on the momentum, Delphic is touring the world and documenting exotic travels with sophisticated travel vlogs on YouTube. (Cocksedge cites Tarkovsky, Kubrick, and French New Wave as visual influences.) The boys have also been writing new songs in the claustrophobic flat they all share.

Could Delphic split up over an argument about whose turn it is to do dishes? “You’re close to the truth,” laughs Cocksedge. But the band’s camaraderie is strong.

“We like having a laugh and taking the piss out of pretension, and the bourgeois, and an artist who is an artist,” says Cocksedge. “This is where we get found out for being boring English people who just want to make music. We’re just massive geeks.” F