All Paths Diverge Archives

Album Review: Delving, All Paths Diverge

Posted in Reviews on September 3rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Best known as the founding guitarist and vocalist for Berlin-based heavy progressive innovators Elder, Nick DiSalvo released the first instrumental exploration from Delving in May 2021. Titled Hirschbrunnen (review here), it was insular in its aural concept, trying ideas and digging into sound in a way that, for DiSalvo allowed a focus on playing without having to sing, and let him follow whims that, for one reason or another, didn’t fit and didn’t have to fit with expectations for his main outfit. It was a true side-project. A delve. Shows happened that Fall, including Desertfest Belgium, and afterward, DiSalvo went back to Elder and put out a career album in 2022’s Innate Passage (review here). Of course the vocals were a highlight.

The point is that sometimes these things tie together for artists in ways that a given listener doesn’t necessarily know about or that anyone realizes, and while DiSalvo‘s alternately winding and sweeping style of guitar play is recognizable in Delving, it’s obvious the project’s progression at least to the point of putting out the first record brought some level of satisfaction, otherwise this follow-up, All Paths Diverge, likely wouldn’t exist. Recorded in Berlin with co-producer Richard Behrens (who also mixed; Carl Saff mastered), the 62-minute collection finds DiSalvo once again handling the bulk of the work himself. Perilymph‘s Fabien de Menou contributes Rhodes and upright piano — I don’t know if that’s the keys on opener “Sentinel” used to add flourish to the signature proggy twists of lead guitar, but fair enough — and a guitar spot from Elder‘s Michael Risberg on “Zodiak,” which is the longest of the seven songs included at 13:38.

Not appearing on All Paths Diverge are bassist Ingwer Boysen (also Weite, High Fighter) or drummer Uno Bruniusson (also Maggot Heart, ex-Death Alley, In Solitude), who join DiSalvo and Risberg in the live incarnation of Delving, and it might be interesting if at some point in the future the band does a live record or an everybody-inclusive recording, but the heady nature of the project to this point — the exercises in composition, arrangement, balance and mood taking place across All Paths Diverge — benefits from the implied intimacy of a solo perspective. That is to say, “Sentinel” and “Omnipresence,” which follows and veers into a bit of crunch in the second half to offset some of the Mellotron shimmer, set an expansive tone for the rest of the record’s sundry divergences — none of which are especially radical, unless you count the penultimate “The Ascetic” turning to drone or the krautrock electronic beat in closer “Vanish With Grace” as such; neither feels out of place or like too much of a reach in the front-to-back listening experience — and DiSalvo‘s crisp but fluid style of performance helps the material create an overarching impression of flow.

This proves central to the proceedings as “Chain of Mind” loops its way into an intricate rhythm and opens up to a chorus like a ringing church bell (but not literally) before diving into keyboard noodling and rebuilding around that in its second half, shifting into the patient and prog-funky build-up in the first four minutes of “New Meridian,” which sweeps in a louder guitar only after casting its hypnosis to a point of bursting, the drums answering the breakout moment with mixed-low-but-still-there snare that sounds like it’s making up for those restful initial minutes. Topped with keys leading a relatively straightforward melody — DiSalvo‘s method of pairing complex underlayers with a standout forward instrumental melody will be familiar to fans of his work with Elder; the balance in the arrangement is a distinguishing factor for Delving, as much as it needs to be — and unfolding a dynamic course of mellow progressivism, “New Meridian” lives up to its title’s hint toward shifting paradigms, but especially as the centerpiece, it brings to light just how much of the playing style is recognizable as his own.

Which is to say, short of singing on it, it would be hard for Delving to come across as more DiSalvo‘s own in terms of character. That doesn’t mean he’s not trying new things or following different inspiration — just the opposite. That’s part of it, too. As the most expansive piece in terms of runtime, “Zodiak” maintains the energy of “New Meridian” before it in this kind of angular pastoral brightness of tone and movement — the shimmer noted above is multifaceted and consistent — even as it would seem to mark the break between the first and second of All Paths Diverge‘s two component LPs. The procession — two songs each on side A and B, “Zodiak” by itself on side C, and “The Ascetic” and “Vanish With Grace” tucked away on side D — holds the album’s most experimentalist fare for last, and that’s reasonable, but by the time he gets there, “Zodiak” has both built momentum and offered a resonance of guitar and keyboard melody and shifted into an extended ambient drone to which one assumes Risberg also contributed, so the palette is already pretty broad.

That is revealed as a strength as “The Ascetic” picks up with standalone guitar and is mellow-unfurled to gradually build tension in the keyboard rhythm before live drums or something programmed close enough to them arrive approaching the halfway point. As a concept, ascetism avoids indulgence, and if that’s the goal I’m not sure effects-laced instrumentalist psych-prog with interwoven lines of synth and guitar and repeating cycles of tom fills is going to get one there, but the payoff that starts at 8:03 speaks to a simpler ideal in its heavier shove. “Vanish With Grace” has some of that as well, countermanded by a dub finish that, even as the devolving final movement of an hour-long record, comes across as somewhat daring. Nonetheless, it is a suitably divergent delve for Delving‘s All Paths Diverge, and as much as the sound of the ‘band’ is typified by elements familiar from DiSalvo‘s songwriting for Elder, so too does this sophomore effort seem to be laying claim to ideas specifically and pointedly outside that sphere.

Does that mean Delving are going to get weirder going forward? There’s always hope, but a specific thoughtfulness and cognizance of audience is no less a part of what DiSalvo does than any particular bit of sonic adventuring, and All Paths Diverge boasts plenty of that as well. Still, the unspoken message of Delving finding its own way as a project distinct from Elder shines through like the guitar tone, and whatever comes as a result of these willful turns of plot will only be stronger for the paths being carved out in these songs.