Music, for me, has always had an ability to transport the listener back to the time when they first heard it. In the same way that simple taste or smell can recall the most intimate of moments, a piece of music can evoke a similar sensation, stripping away the years and placing a person into a college dorm or festival with an uncanny degree of recall. The Black Delta Movement results in a similar sensation, despite this being their debut album, their reverb-drenched sound harking back to the mid-90s when such music would (whisper it) even appear on the radio. With elements of shoegaze and psychedelia floating through the mix, The Black Delta Movement recall the likes of Spacemen Three, Ride, Slowdive and Lupine Howl as they pitch screaming walls of barely controlled guitar against stoned-out vocals, producing an album that is not afraid to embrace the visceral whilst remaining firmly melodic.
The journey back to a simpler decade begins with ‘Rome’, a mid-paced psyche-pop song that would have neatly fitted onto a Radio 1 playlist somewhere between the trippier end of Britpop and the Rock Show with John Cavanagh. It seems apt that the album was recorded at Love Buzz studios given that the track recalls that ‘Bleach’-era cover of Nirvana, with its blazing guitars, somnolent vocals and barely coherent solo and there’s a raw authenticity to the playing that suggests that much of it was tracked live. The band take things up a notch with ‘Hunting Ground’, a track that pitches heavily tremeloed guitar and a syncopated beat against a blistering chorus that threatens to flood over the listener completely. That nirvana feel resurfaces on the simplistic battering of ‘King Mosquito’ It’s a track that genuinely combines pop and punk in the way that bands like the Pixies, Husker Du and even Sonic Youth (when the mood took them) did so well, and there’s a raw power (to coin a phrase from Iggy Pop) to the band’s joyful outpouring that cannot help but peel back the years and make you feel like bouncing around like an idiot. ‘Deceit’, meanwhile, employs the fuzzy vocal / clean guitar dynamic of bands like the Hives. It’s pure garage rock and it’s easy to imagine a room full of androgynous creatures with floppy fringes going nuts on cheap cider as the band thrashes away in the background, although there’s a hidden sting in the killer bass tone that adds just a touch of menace behind the carefully-cultivated naivety. Things take a spacier turn on ‘Hot coals’ which adds plenty of reverb as if to disguise a melody that is actually quite beautiful beneath the fuzz. It’s another example of the band’s potent ability to combine weight and wonder in equal measure and it’s another track that would make a fine single with its nods to the Beatles and blur.
String scrapes kick off the rhythm of the taut ‘Let the rain come’, a jangling, adrenalin-charged monster of a track that must detonate on stage like an a-bomb. It kicks the second half of the album into gear with the verse building no end of tension before the eventual, blissful release of the chorus. In contrast ‘Ivory shakes’ brings the fuzz from the beginning, although it lacks the laser-precise genius of its forebear, proving to be something of a holding operation on the way to the nimble, and rather wonderful ‘for you’. If ‘Ivory Shakes’ sees the band reverting to default garage settings, ‘for you’ sees The Black Delta Movement shake their collective heads and push the boundaries a little further out, crafting a brilliantly hypnotic track in the process. With the end demonstrably in sight, ‘no end’ seeks to maintain the high energy levels the album has demonstrated with a rumbling rhythm laid down on the toms over which sparse guitar and trippy vocals float in and out of view in a sea of delay. The album concludes with the lengthy ‘butterfly’, a track that cleverly starts off as a perfect piece of slight, summer-time pop music that floats on the breeze like the titular creature, before heading off on a sonic adventure that will have more adventurous listeners enthralled. It’s a pretty much perfect end to a frequently excellent album.
Recorded by Mike Burnham, ‘Preservation’ is pitched exactly right between the modern need for clarity and vintage authenticity. It’s an album that allows the subtler nuances of the music to shine through whilst suggesting that the band, in their live incarnation, are a ferocious prospect. Although there are a couple of tracks that err towards the more radio-friendly fare of the Charlatans, on the flip side, you’ll find absolutely genius work-outs like ‘butterfly’, ‘hunting ground’ and ‘let the rain come’, all of which see the band developing their own identity with considerable style. Most importantly, it’s an album that evokes the exploratory spirit of psychedelic music without resorting to copycat techniques and it’s a hugely enjoyable ride from start to finish. Absolutely a band to see live, the Black Delta Movement have a considerable future ahead of them and this is a phenomenal start. 9
