Delmer Darion

In Autumn 1932, American naturalist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton were sealed into a bathysphere – a submersible metal sphere lowered into the ocean on a long cable – and dove deeper than any human had been before, a half mile under the waves. With the hope of documenting new aquatic life and terrain, the deep-sea explorers stared through thick quartz windows into the gloomy depths hued with purple light. They sank past heaths of mottled anemones, by gulper eels, sea snails, giant dragonfish and toothy-jawed anglers, as the water exploded into firework displays of bioluminescent fish, and the endless black gulf shattered, boiling with the light of new worlds observed for the first time.

The accounts of Beebe and Barton – translated by Else Bostelmann into wondrous paintings for theNational Geographic – provide the story for Delmer Darion’s new single ‘Half Mile Down’, featuring Slaughter Beach, Dog (Modern Baseball’s Jake Ewald). It’s the second single of the year from the West Midlands-born, London-based experimental electronic producer duo comprising Tom Lenton and Oliver Jack, whose January release ‘First Photograph of the Nebula in Orion’ was named as one of the best tracks of the month by the Quietus and Uncut, likened by Stereogum to “listening to Mount Eerie in a late 19th century attic.”

The track itself marks a steep departure from the expansive songwriting favoured across Delmer Darion’s debut album Morning Pageants, but clasps to the same clandestine curiosity. Its brittle and sparsely percussive electronics billow with rippling strings and buoyant synths, while Slaughter Beach, Dog’s vocal cracks through them with a dread and wonder that makes three thousand leagues under the sea feel both the warmest and coldest place on earth. The final line is taken from Langdon Smith’s fanciful love poem ‘Evolution’, where the depths reached educe a primordial memory, their thoughts turning inwards to relationships on land.

“The first sketch of this track came together very quickly,” explains Lenton. “I was flicking through William Beebe’s Half Mile Down and then dug out some old ocean stock footage that was set to a lovely, dusty orchestral score. The song is anchored around mangled samples from that and tells the story of one of the first ever deep-sea dives. It’s a song for feeling full of the strange and scary joy of life, and it’s probably the closest thing to a love song we’ll ever write.”

“We were both massive Modern Baseball fans back in the day and have really enjoyed all of Jake’s work since as Slaughter Beach, Dog. We still can’t really believe he’s now on a Delmer Darion track. He was an absolute pro to work with. He immediately understood what we were after and gave us so many incredible options. Don’t be surprised if we release seven more versions of the song just to use them.”

The accompanying music video by the Bristol-based Clump Collective follows the Bathysphere on its great descent, modelled in miniature through a backdrop of strange creatures, loosely inspired by the work of Georges Méliès.--

“The only other place comparable to these marvellous nether regions, must surely be naked space itself, out far beyond atmosphere, between the stars, where sunlight has no grip upon the dust and rubbish of planetary air, where the blackness of space, the shining planets, comets, suns, and stars must really be closely akin to the world of life as it appears to the eyes of an awed human being, in the open ocean, one half mile down.”

– William Beebe, 1934

Praise for Morning Pageants

"Delmer Darion might have made one of the underground debuts of the year."

– Loud and Quiet, 9/10

"Morning Pageants represents one of the most transfixing listens you'll have all year."

– Clash Magazine, 8/10

"No stone is left unturned by the duo... a thought-provoking and totally unique body of work." – NME, 4/5

"Feels for all the world like one of those rare, underground paradigm shifts."

– Electronic Sound

"An album I'll be returning to for years to come." – Gideon Coe, BBC 6 Music

"An exquisite, extraordinary world. One of the best debut albums of 2020." – Sarah Gosling, Future Artists, BBC Radio 1