Morning Pageants by Delmer Darion

The West Midlands-born and London-based electronic duo Delmer Darion (comprising Oliver Jack and Tom Lenton) announce their debut album ‘Morning Pageants’ will be released on the 16th October via Practise Music. Their debut album has been five years in the making: a sprawling, industrial ten-track account of the death of the devil, inspired by a line in the Wallace Stevens poem ‘Esthétique du Mal’: “The death of Satan was a tragedy for the imagination.” A vast aural landscape is covered from the opening melodies coded in the constructed language of Solresol. When sequenced together, ‘Morning Pageants’ is shrouded in the same intricate noise of self-sampling and tape degradation. De-centred rhythmic assemblies of analogue drum machines play through a series of guitar pedals, thunderous bass swells from a self oscillating filter feedback patch, and folk songs dissolve into thin air. The artwork for Morning Pageants was designed by Oliver, based from a series of 16th Century prints called “The Dance of Death” by Hans Holbein, depicting different people being led away by Death. Recreating one of the prints, he replaced the figure being led away with an original drawing of Satan. The final artwork is printed on Nepalese Lokta paper, a waxy yellow paper that has been used for lots of sacred texts. Even if you’re not following the descent of the devil step by step through their unspooling archives, you’ll have little chance not to be transfixed.

Electronic duo journey through a sinister underworld to tell the beguiling tale of Satan’s demise on complex debut

7 / 10

For their debut Delmer Darion go on a theological electronic exploration

8 / 10

In the opening exposition of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 magnum opus, Magnolia, a deep sea diver is discovered charred at the top a tree following a

9 / 10

Delmer Darion are remarkably fully-formed on their debut LP Morning Pageants – this is idea-rich electronica, brimming over with potential

7 / 10