Delta Sleep: The Softest Touch

The pandemic put a pin in the plans of everyone everywhere. As the world descended into chaos, Britain spiralled into a saga of lockdowns. It felt like the gods were sounding the death knell for the music industry. Albums were shelved, tours were cancelled. It was heart-breaking. However, it also meant that bands who’d spent the last decade travelling here, there and everywhere finally had a chance to spend some time at home. And in the case of Brighton’s DELTA SLEEP, they found themselves putting pen to paper on projects they thought might take much longer including live album Soft Sounds and their third full-length Spring Island.

“It was kind of nice to just take a step back and spend some time at home with the family, and just take a little bit of reflection time,” reflects drummer Blake Mostyn, who feels like he’s finally had the chance to replenish the batteries. “I don’t really know if there’s ever been a time of if there ever will be a time where the whole world just stops like that, so it’s nice to put everything back into perspective and go back out there with a new lease of life for it all.”

The sentiment is shared by the entire band, who despite being renowned for touring their indie-dyed math-rock like it’s going out of fashion, realised they were actually quite tired as bassist Dave Jackson explains, “once I’d settled into the pandemic, it was weirdly quite nice. I haven’t been home in Spring for what feels like 10 years of my life so it was nice to see Spring not from the inside of a van. It was nice to just sit and watch it happening from a bedroom.”

And it’s whilst they were back in their bedrooms that they got to work on Soft Sounds and Spring Island. The former an audio-visual diary of unplugged versions of their songs from different venues around the world and the latter their third full-length, yet another evolutionary step for the band. Both projects weren’t meant to be born so fast, but the band have no regrets.

“To be honest, the videos we put out for Soft Sounds, we started ages ago but lockdown pushed it to the forefront. I think without the pandemic, it probably would’ve come out in like 10 years time” explains Dave, who’s all too keen to admit they’re the tortoise in this race. “The album came sooner than it would have done too, because we would’ve been on the road for most of 2020. It forced our hand in a way because we couldn’t do anything else, the only thing we could do is write.”

Despite the album finding it’s feet in the pandemic, it’s seeds were sewn way back when they were writing 2018’s Ghost City. And as you dive deeper into Spring Island, you’ll find so much of it evolves directly from it’s predecessor, as Dave explains. “The Softest Touch was written for Ghost City, and didn’t quite make it because it wasn’t finished – I think we already had the album in us, it just took the pandemic to make us do something.”

Funnily enough, it’s songs like The Softest Touch and Forest Fire that they’re the most proudest of. The journeys each song has taken them on is testament to their chemistry as a band. And they feel it captures what makes DELTA SLEEP the band it is.

“I’ve got a real soft spot for The Softest Touch, because it’s gone through so much of a process and it’s had so many different iterations,” explains Blake, pride and exasperation clear in his voice at having finally finished it. “We’ve got mobile phone recordings from years ago of us doing it in the practice room and it starts completely different, and it’s nice to finally sculpt it into what it is now.”

Spring Island as an album is the sound of a band sculpting a masterpiece. There’s layers of colour and vibrance that drive depth to their math-rock structures, and there’s this shoegaze-gloss washed across their music that adds accessibility and pop-sensibilities to their sound. None of it was planned, with the majority being a result of the band being back in a studio together for the first time in two years.

“I don’t think we think too deeply about where the sound is going, it’s just a fusion of what we’re listening to at the time as our tastes are continuously evolving,” Blake counters, before Dave jumps in, adding, “it’s definitely a subconcious thing, it’s more like we’ve tried that before so let’s try doing this idea because we didn’t do that before. I don’t think we’d ever be able to write the same thing again, because we just don’t listen to ourselves enough, we just write what’s fun – we’re not that clever that we can think of a new sound to create and go for it.”

Through those moments, they found themselves discovering shoegaze and revisiting THIN LIZZY. It’s safe to say one has had more influence over Spring Island than the other. And most importantly, even these influences were just part of them giving in to their pent up desire to play, as Blake elaborates. “Getting back in the room together was proper fire, I think it highlighted what we didn’t realise we missed as much as we actually did. [The Detail] was that released of frustration, of just getting in a room together and when we finished that one, we were all like ‘oh snap, we’ve stumbled across something’ and it’s all of us just firing on all cylinders – we hashed that one out without even speaking about it, it’s that communication you have when you write and you get that it’s a special one just coming out of thin air.”

Spring Island as a whole is a special album. However, they’re keen to keep it’s distance from the pandemic too much. Whilst it’s lyrical themes often feel like an audible diary of the last two years of our lives as global citizens – opener Water Fall starts with the line ‘I’ve been dreaming about leaving the house’ – they didn’t plan on this being a pandemic album, nor do they want it to be.

“I think Devin [Yüceil, vocals] was weary that he didn’t want to be too obvious with it all, we didn’t want to write a lockdown album because no one wants to hear that,” laughs Dave, bemused at how surreal it all is. “But it’s impossible to ignore the last two years of everyone’s life, it’s been pretty insane and something that none of us can forget, so there’s definitely parts of it lyrically but it’s more about being isolated and dealing with mental health and depression, it’s about the things the pandemic brought, because you just look around a bit more and take it all in.”

DELTA SLEEP aren’t always so serious, they originally attempted to name every track after James Bond themes – with View To A Fill making the final cut. However, they do take their album titles seriously. They see it as a way of tying every release together, and interestingly, Spring Island summarises the evolution they’ve undertaken all round, and guided it’s artwork too.

“There’s a lot of intentional looks at environmental issues within the lyrics, so the idea of Spring Island in essence is quite poignant, but in my head it’s also an evolution of Ghost City, because you’ve got a tiny bit left of the dodecahedron shape of that manmade structure, and then everything is is taken over by it’s environment, which fits our evolution sound-wise too.”

Whilst many bands burnt themselves out trying to find creative freedom through a global pandemic, DELTA SLEEP have entered a purple patch of form, delivering their finest opus to date with Spring Island.

Spring Island is out now via Sofa Boy Records. 

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