Posted in Whathaveyou on June 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
If you watched/read the recent interview with Delving‘s Nick DiSalvo — the video of which is also embedded below — you already knew that a tour announcement was forthcoming, but really, isn’t it nice to see? Am I going to go to one of these shows? No. Sadly there are no trips to Luxembourg slated in my immediate future (I say that sincerely). But still, it’s refreshing to be able to post a list of tour dates not just for established acts — though DiSalvo brings a pedigree with him via fronting Elder for the better part of the last 15 years — but for a new project as well. Spring comes to planet Earth. New life out of all the chaos and death, and so on.
Delving‘s debut album, Hirschbrunnen (review here), is likewise refreshing and engaging and all that good stuff, not beholden to a sense of heft, but not entirely removed from one either, transposing the proggy flow of Elder to an instrumentalist context that lets itself be driven by other forces, keys, synth, etc. It’s out on Stickman, and while I won’t get to Luxembourg this time around, the fact that DiSalvo is taking Delving on the road even in this initial feel-it-out capacity speaks to his intention to keep the band going as more than a one-off. That’s also good news.
Dates follow, along with ticket links:
DELVING – FALL TOUR 2021
I’m beyond excited to announce some tour dates for delving coming up in a few months! Hope to see you at one of the shows below.
Thank you to Artourette for the beautiful tour poster! We’ll definitely be printing some of these for the upcoming run.
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.
For a quarantine-era project, Delving isn’t necessarily all that insular. The outfit — stylized all-lowercase: delving — offers clues right on its face, from the colorful artwork depicting a fountain in Rudolph Wilde Park in Berlin, Germany, to the fact that the title Hirschbrunnen translates to “stag fountain,” to the fact that the moniker chosen is describing the exact process of what’s happening in the music. Think of the idea of “delving,” and the fact that the name of the band is lowercase. There’s something humble about it, and even in the eponymous second track, something tentative that dissipates the deeper you go into, say, the three-minute motorik psych rocker “Einstürzende Plattenbauten” or the concluding “Vast,” an 11-minute expanse that moves between willful drift and the record’s most weighted crush. So perhaps Delving is driven in part by an abiding awareness of its own craft, and fair enough for that.
For multi-instrumentalist Nick DiSalvo, who’s best known for his work as founding guitarist/vocalist and principle songwriter for Elder, that awareness is well earned, and even as far into progressive rock as his main outfit has pushed — 2020’s Omens (review here) brought them to a new level in that regard — Delving nonetheless represents a pushing back or pushing aside of expectations and a refreshing creative freedom that comes through even in the tonal clarity of the guitar and the keyboard bounce of opener “Ultramarine.”
To make the album, DiSalvo recorded with Richard Behrens (Heat, ex-Samsara Blues Experiment, FOH for Kadavar, etc.) and Emanuele Baratto (who also mastered) at Big Snuff Studio, and as DiSalvo handles the bulk of guitar, bass, drums, keys, etc., himself, Elder bandmate Mike Risberg also steps in to add guitar to Hirschbrunnen‘s three longest tracks, “The Reflecting Pool” (9:30), “Hirschbrunnen” (9:34) and the aforementioned “Vast.” These songs, with “Ultramarine” starting the record at just under eight minutes, are interspliced with comparatively shorter pieces, whether that’s “Delving” (7:01) or “Wait and See” (7:13) or “Einstürzende Plattenbauten” (3:40), adding to the feeling of movement between one cut and the next, however individual the explorations within might prove.
And the personalities within Hirschbrunnen do vary, whether it’s “Delving” adding forward rhythmic momentum to the textural foundation “Ultramarine” sets forth, or the piano and basslines of “The Reflecting Pool” tying together with the Mellotron (or Mellotron-esque guitar; one has been fooled before) and hypnotic guitar progression in the second half of “Wait and See,” the keystone surge of which serves as a fitting and purposeful-seeming centerpiece to the record as a whole. Those looking for some commonality with Elder will find it in that moment, as well as in DiSalvo‘s winding style of guitar in “Delving” itself, reminiscent of some of the breaks in his main unit’s more recent works, and here and there throughout if you really feel like digging — but to do so is to miss part of the point of the project as a whole.
While Elder have not wanted for exploration — their The Gold & Silver Sessions EP (discussed here) boasted plenty in 2019 — Delving ultimately holds more in common with 2014’s Azurite & Malachite (review here), on which DiSalvo also worked with Risberg, under the banner of Gold and Silver. Aside from the instrumentalism, the two projects share a progressive foundation, but where Delving departs from its conceptual semi-predecessor is perhaps even more in its willingness to not be “heavy” in the sense of weighted low-end distortion and crash, and to allow its parts to flesh out melodically along an organic course of their own.
These aren’t exactly jams, though “Einstürzende Plattenbauten” has some spontaneity to its guitar and it’s not alone in that — the prevailing spirit of the release is exploration, after all, and particularly where Risberg sits in, there’s more opportunity to flesh out what’s there in the basic tracks. “The Reflecting Pool” is accordingly spacious in its finish, and the shimmer into which the title-track makes its way carries all the refreshing spirit of, yes, running through a park fountain in the middle of yet another record temperature summer. Escapism? Maybe, but at least as much about the going itself as the being gone.
As regards descriptors, it’s low-hanging fruit to call Hirschbrunnen atmospheric, though it is that. But in this case, that doesn’t necessarily mean quiet or droning or ambient so much as able to convey a sense of place, mental or physical, though following the what-if-Earthless-but-one-person kraut shove of “Einstürzende Plattenbauten,” “Vast” brings out a grand-style culmination that has its subdued stretches. In the context of the preceding six tracks, which alternate between patient and pointedly impatient in their structures, “Vast” still represents a next-stage far-outness, and though its payoff lacks nothing for heft, it’s still a departure in form.
It might be fair to point to those two final inclusions as showcasing the truest potential of Delving as a project distinct from Elder in terms of where and to what they might lead creatively, but the truth is that potential is writ large across the album as a whole and the end is just a convenient summary. If Delving is to be an ongoing project with its own development or a periodic aside for DiSalvo or, like Gold and Silver, an outlet whose progressive stylizations were eventually worked into Elder‘s songwriting, it remains to be seen. In a time so marked by upheaval of one’s normal processes, DiSalvo is hardly alone in finding a new and somewhat-different avenue of expression.
With familiar elements and individualized nuance, where Delving ends may be a mystery, but it begins here, and as an initial offering, Hirschbrunnen demonstrates not only its own potential, but how comfortable DiSalvo has become in his own skin as a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Even without vocals, these tracks stand on their own, not entirely separate from his work elsewhere, but neither entirely of it, inhabiting multiple spaces carved out as they go. Humility may have driven calling the “band” Delving, but the greater creative process of which this project is a part is broad and only growing more so with time.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 3rd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Man that’s a clumsy headline. Nevertheless, we press on.
One can only imagine how refreshing it might be for someone like Nick DiSalvo of Elder to compose music without any expectation of what shape it might ultimately take. Of course that’s never really, really possible in a world of subjective experience, but these things are relative, and if Delving — also stylized low-caps: delving — were Elder, there would be significant baggage with that in terms of what the audience expects. I’m not saying I’ve heard the entirety of Hirschbrunnen or anything — the album will see release in May through Stickman Records — but the moniker chosen for the project is fairly tongue-in-cheek. DiSalvo doesn’t so much delve into the world of lush and progressive rock that he’s creating across the album’s near-hour-long run as he does dive in headfirst. And if there’s any expectation it’s fair to place on Hirschbrunnen, it would probably be that.
My guess is DiSalvo will be surprised how much of Elder‘s fanbase digs on what he’s doing in channeling some of his pandemic-era restlessness and longstanding proggy/fusion tendencies into a collection of its own, and with just how much Delving feels like a culmination of where his journey has taken him to this point, so too is it a beginning. As I said above, must be refreshing.
And hey, nice to see Richard Behrens (Wedge, Heat, ex-Samsara Blues Experiment, etc.) at Big Snuff involved with the recording.
From the PR wire:
Nick DiSalvo (ELDER) To Release DELVING Solo-Album!
Hirschbrunnen out this Spring on Stickman Records!
For many who lived through it, 2020 will forever be the year that time stopped. Especially for those who thrive in packed, sweaty environment – musicians, concertgoers, even humble record label operators – this led to some pretty fundamental changes in the way we spent our time. Enough with the platitudes: delving is a new project by Nick DiSalvo (better known as the frontman of Elder and one half of Gold & Silver) long in the making but finally taking off in this dreaded year where creativity was relegated exclusively to one’s own domain.
DiSalvo elaborates:
“I’m an almost obsessive songwriter, working on music every day and amassing a huge collection of song fragments and ideas that often don’t get the attention I’d like because of the time I spend with my main band. ‘Thanks’ to this pandemic, I’ve had plenty of time to pick up some of the songs I’ve written over the past years and finally make an album that I’ve been telling myself forever I’d do.
From my earliest moments as a musician, I have been obsessed with home recordings, begging my parents for a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder for Christmas when I was 12 and making my own albums. delving is a continuation of this creative spirit: experimenting all on my own, forgetting bands, fans and expectations and making whatever music I want to.”
The debut album Hirschbrunnen will be released in May 2021 through Stickman Records. It is a collection of songs that display a wide range of influences from psychedelic rock, early electronic music, 70’s prog as well as jazz and even ambient sounds – yet all with a distinct songwriting style that DiSalvo has come to be known for. The album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Richard Behrens and Emanuele Baratto at Big Snuff Studio.
“Hirschbrunnen – “stag fountain” – is the colloquial name of a large fountain that presides over a large green area near where I live.“ DiSalvo continues. “For me, it’s been strange to see my world, which normally consists of a fair amount of travel and external stimuli, reduced to one city, one district, one block for so long. Frustrating as that is, you might start to find inspiration and surprising beauty in your everyday surroundings that you otherwise would have ignored. Just as all the music I make is influenced by my experiences, Hirschbrunnen is a product of this unique and strange time in which we all have been forced to delve more deeply into our own thoughts.”
