Arctic Reviews

Nights at the Cockpit usually have some significance for those performing. An intimate venue (Which in real terms means it's one precarious rung up from the toilet circuit), tickets displayed on the wall will tell you that it already has a history to rival that of the Duchess of York, the legend soaked pub with a stage that it replaced.

Acts are always going one of two ways in such places. The previous evening for example it had seemed that finally things were looking up for maverick Welsh trio Future of The Left, but tonight the usually elusive signposts to success are far easier to spot. Delphic arrived on the back of top ten debut album Acolyte and a tidal wave of expectation, such that tickets were sold out weeks in advance and even the usual touts had given up and gone home long before the AR team arrived.

Like the previous evening, presumably to make the Cockpit's club night run more smoothly the trio found themselves in the venue's ante-room, where circa three hundred people found themselves crammed into a space roughly the size of a bus shelter. It was a personal space infringing arrangement which brought out the worst of Dunkirk spirit; spilled drinks, pixilated growls, sly elbows and harsh words.

All this was in contrast to the sweet, almost childlike nature of Delphic's music, itself a destination set in near-history, synth pop in excelsis. And there was also an almost adolescent sense of shyness about the trio's performance. Lit almost solely by three neon tubes which looked like they'd been nicked from the Hacienda's fire sale, James Cook, Dan Theman and Matt Cocksedge float around in the near dark, barely speaking beyond the standard "Great to be in Leeds" platitudes and mimicking the rock ethics of statues. It's a lack of interaction and good old stagecraft which can be forgiven considering their relative inexperience, but one that future audiences less caught in up the ecstatic rush of discovery may not be so tolerant of.

So prodigiously then that's it's irrepressibly now, if Acolyte has a flaw it's homogeneity, one which becomes more exposed when playing in places with shitty acoustics. It's not mush, but the more intricate dynamics of the likes of Counterpoint and Hurt are the worse for being lost in the constant rumble.

Significant yes, but these problems are growing pains. Delphic's vision after all is music crafted, elegant and pristine, always in control and untroubled by the stuff that happens on earth. And whilst they bask in the glow of both unit shifting and critical acclaim, it seems like little can go wrong.