Video Interview: Nick DiSalvo on New Project Delving, Elder Recording and More
Founding Elder guitarist/vocalist Nick DiSalvo released the debut album from his don’t-call-it-a-solo-project Delving last week. Titled Hirschbrunnen (review here) and issued through Stickman Records, it’s an excursion into stylistic and instrumental freedom that brings new textures of synth, electronics and layered guitar to some methods familiar and unfamiliar to the context of his prior work. Classically progressive in some ways, touching on heavy in others, it is a pandemic-era exploration that, DiSalvo notes, was born of the restlessness of being off tour but was a long-simmering back-burner concept. Always wanted to do a thing? No time like lockdown.
Immediately, Delving is brought into coexistence with DiSalvo‘s main outlet. Elder will hit the studio in Hamburg in August to begin their next LP even as Delving — which was recorded at Big Snuff in Berlin — looks to do a kind of mini-tour this Fall, feeling out a process of playing live at least in Germany. Hirschbrunnen, which takes its name from a statue in Rudolph Wilde Park near where DiSalvo lives in Berlin, embraces its distinctions. Part of the point of the thing is to be a home for material that, to DiSalvo‘s ear, is separate from Elder in its form or fluidity.
I asked him outright if he was tired of writing heavy riffs. He didn’t prevaricate in saying no, but it’s likewise clear that pushing back on internal and external expectations of Elder as a “heavy” band — which they are, even on last year’s Omens (review here), which introduced a new drummer and an even more progressive sound — and being free to create outside of those expectations was refreshing in his work on Delving. Though instrumental in its entirety, that sensibility comes through the songs without question. They go where they want, even if Hirschbrunnen is presenting a nascent form of these ideas.
There will be more Delving, and Elder will have that new record as well, and return to touring when possible — they’ve already had a few confirmations for 2022. Those are things you’ll want to know. Beyond that, I hope you dive in here and enjoy.
We start off talking about yerba mate, as one will.
Thanks for reading and watching:
Delving Interview with Nick DiSalvo, June 15, 2021
Delving‘s Hirschbrunnen is out now on Stickman Records. You can hear it on the player below and get more info at the links.
