We bring you the first listen of the lead single for Delmer Darion’s sophomore LP, The Emperor of Ice Cream.
“For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.”
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
[dropcap size=small]L[/dropcap]ast night, an announcement was made by Exeter electronic duo Delmer Darion that following the successes of their first record All Over Again, All Over Again, a sophomore LP of B-Sides and remixes is to be released, called The Emperor of Ice Cream. We’re delighted to be able to bring you the lead single, ‘Maps’, a cover of the 2003 alt rock love song from New York trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which was premiered at Arts on the Move Festival earlier this month. Watch the music video below.
Far from shying away from the song’s vast musical antiquity, Delmer Darion’s ‘Maps’ is confident with the most charming fragility. It is kicked off with a repeated sample from Keaton Henson’s cover of the song on his Lucky EP, behind a heavily distorted female vocal singing the fame lined “Pack up, I’m straight enough”, only a day after America’s slight moral redemption. The waining continues with a subtle strings sample from Johann Sebastian Bach’s first cello Suite, melodically unrecognisable, but distinct in timbre and musicality.
Video footage is taken from the now public domain Night of the Living Dead, narrating an immoderate portrayal of love being a process of consumption and violence, where a zombie falls in love with a woman who runs away, only for him to get his friends to eat her. The music video is based upon a quote from Virgina Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves, with the band explaining that to be in love with someone is to want to eat them… before adding, “I wouldn’t say powerful storytelling is exactly the focus.”
Tristan Gatward, Online Music Editor
