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Delta Heavy - Midnight Forever [Delta Heavy]

Authors

Welcome to my nineteenth album write-up! I apologize in advance for the wall of text that is about to follow. Scroll down for a TL;DR on the LP.

Background

Against The seemingly insurmountable Tide of new artists Chasing Gold in the Skrillex era electronic music scene of the early 2010s, Ben Hall and Simon "Si" James, perhaps better known as Delta Heavy, swiftly gained Higher Ground by not only taking their listeners on one journey through their multi-faceted Fun House of genres after another, but also working together with talented directors made out of actual Flesh & Bone to craft immensely memorable music videos that a mere A.I. Replicant construct could not even conceive of In their Dreams. In a Heartbeat, they had Conquered The EDM Galaxy with their tales through Space Time, easily escaping the Gargantuan Gravity of the newcomer Limbo's Event Horizon with their exclusive signing to the RAM Records Empire.

At times a soundtrack to take Revenge on Apollo's Hydra and cause the End Of Days now only known as Tormenta by Making It Rain with their Demonic remains to (...what, Overkill?); at times Lifting You Up to the City Of Dreams, Babylon, a Heavenly Sanctuary where you'll FEEL Ecstasy unlike Anywhere else and Stay up with Ghosts of days past, with No amount of Gravity able to pull you back down; at times exactly what you need in your state of Delirium, attempting to Badboy Style your way through the next of many Bar Fights, causing Anarchy wherever your Bad Decisions might take you; at times emotional backdrop to the Oscillating Tremors your heart Turbine goes through when your crush tells you to "Hold Me", "Take Me Home" and "Show Me The Light", and eventually knowing that the love of your life is so High On You, they will never Need Nobody But You - across more than a decade of excellence, their cinematic creations were always something to behold.

Even in the wake of RAM's Exodus, they had already accumulated so much experience, Collided with so many artists all across the globe, and Ascended to such stardom that they wouldn't just Get By, the number of future Pathways was sheer E-N-Dless. With the advent of their very own imprint, they set out to push the Dancefloor frontier further and further, and promptly started working on album numero tres, finally released today!

So, while I've got you Here With Me, let's Get Down, Deep Down, Tonight and Work our way through It, meaning their whole entire backstory, and celebrate the unmistakably special vibes of the eternal Nocturn, with Midnight Forever.

The Legend of Ben Hall and Simon James (1984 - 2006)

While Ben and Simon's collaborative career triangle has been going for more two decades now, there actually was a time before the two British brothers from other mother's joined forces.

Let's start with the early musical Benginnings of Monsieur Hall. While little Bennie was living for the classics like Guns N' Roses, Nirvana and Meatloaf at first, everything changed when his dad popped a particularly groovy Ibiza compilation CD into the car, blasting the 12-year-old with A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray - it was love at first sight. Slowly but surely, Ben got more and more into Trance and House, and after a particularly life-changing 16+ raving experience at Ibiza's legendary Space club, where hearing Sasha's Xpander simply blew his mind, the urge to spin some plates himself became so big he wished for some Technics 1210s for Christmas. Considering the naughtiness he would be cooking up later in his life, I'm surprised Santa granted him that wish. The initial rather ben-ign and, in his words, fairly commercial house and trance phase soon morphed into a, in my words, much cooler Progressive House and Breaks obsession, and, as you can probably tell, the DnB era wasn't too far off from there. Soon after, a "very young looking" 17-year-old Ben was already regularly raving it up at London's Fabric, fully in love with the likes of The Nine and Four Days, but the real kicker came when the don himself, Andy C, hit the crowd with the then-new Planet Dust. And again. And another 3 times after that. The transformation was complete, Ben had fully evolved into DnBen.

And Simon? Well, with his mum being a music teacher, the James family home was always filled to the brim with all sorts of instruments, but nothing ever quite caught his attention. Not even the clarinet, which Ma James tried to sell him on with lessons, but he was not having it. However, once Si got himself a random 25 electric guitar for a whopping 25£ and plugged it into a semi-professional headphone amp from Argos, the curse was broken and he became hooked on all things music. A Si of relief went through the household. At 13, Simon became the guitarist of his and his friends' brand new cover band, and before long, covering Weezer's Say It Ain't So inspired him to go down the path of both songwriter and, considering he was also starting to play around with recording stuff on a four-track tape player, production.

Not all too much is known about Simon's initial discovery of the drums and the basses specifically, but what we do know is that he, once his school days were over, eventually moved to Nottingham to study Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. You know who else was wandering the academic Halls in Nottingham? Ben! Unlike Simon, he was enrolled at Nottingham University - and not Trent - for his Art History studies, but as fate would have it, the two still managed to meet back in 2003! After a couple years of exactly what you'd expect the British student life to entail, i.e. spending countless nights playing Xbox, regular nightlife adventures at The Bomb et al., which in their case also included a ton of DJing, and I guess also some studying in between sprinkled in, the two good friends ended up back in big ol' London post-graduation, with Si grinding it out at a music management company and Ben behind an office desk working for his father.

Faced with the dreadful possibility of, shudder, a boring office life, the two of them decided to pursue their true passion - music, of course! Since they were very much on the same page regarding that, were getting on quite well and had complimentary skill sets, with Ben taking over the more technical engineering aspects and Si being more of a songwriter, they committed to working together as a duo, putting their all into getting their foot into the music industry door. With virtually, and also physically, no production experience between the two of them, they began working through as many online tutorials from their favourite producers as they could in 2006, figuring out the rest all on their own, to get a leg up on their competition, and soon enough, demo CDs were being handed out at events and mp3's were being sent via AIM.

The name hastily written on these discs? Delta Heavy, often stylised as DELTΔ HEΔVY and named after Sasha and John Digweed's 2000 tour of the same name, not the rocket. Don't worry, Sasha has given his blessing since then.

Taking Off Rather dRAMatically (2006 - 2011)

With influences ranging from then-contemporary dram and bass like Bad Company, Shx FX, and Ram Trilogy to the likes of Giorgio Moroder, Bassment Jaxx, and Dubfire, whose tune Roadkill is credited as the first House or Techno tune that made Si feel the same high Electro and DnB usually caused, they did not have to spend all too much time convincing people to sign their uniquely crafted musical cocktail. After only as many years as the delta has sides, they had already gotten full support from none other than Futurebound, leading to their debut release Galaxy, on Viper's legendary Acts Of Mad Men compilation in 2009. Drum and bass too straight-forward for ya? Well, that very same year also saw them become part of the soundtrack for the Michael Caine led revenge-fueled action thriller flick Harry Brown, with their Dubstep take on Crystal Fighters's I Love London!

However, while a fun anecdote, Mister Caine was not responsible for their imminent breakthrough, that would be Ben's sister Sophie! Since she was working at Fabric's brand new, now long closed club in London, Matter, where promoter Will Harold had recruited Hospitality, Rinse and RAM to reside in their spaces, the bois gave her a CD chock-full of their sickest tunes to sneak directly to RAM head honchos Scott "Red One" Bourne and Andrew "Andy C" Clarke, who actually loved what they were hearing, inviting them over for an interview not long after. Suddenly, they found themselves being asked to send over more of their stuff so the label can work out a plan for a full-on signing! Amazing, right? Problem was, they had already put literally everything they had on that CD. Immediately, they cancelled all their plans and pushed themselves to the limits of both their creat- and productivity with a full week of non-stop studio time. The end result? Space Time, the A-side of what would become their very first RAM release!

Paired with Take The Stairs, their take on deadmau5's You Need A Ladder, this instant-classic odyssey through the universe, the theme of which stemmed from Ben's love of space documentaries, would not only stay in their sets for years to come, took the scene by storm, and would go on to earn them a Best Track nomination at the 2010 Drum & Bass Arena Awards and their first play on BBC Radio 1, courtesy of Zane Lowe! Just a few weeks later, their first vinyl release, their Viper followup Abort, earned them their first number one on the D&B Arena charts, before ending the year with a guest mix for both DNBA and Knowledge, and even more award nominations in the Best Newcomer Producer and Best Newcomer DJ categories. Phew!

The hype train was only just getting started though. With Sophie as their manager, and now fully part of the RAM roster, they not only fired up the remix engine for the likes of Avicii (!), Example and Chase & Status, with dangerously heavy drum & dubstep destroyers Overkill / Hold Me they also landed yet another instant smash-hit. Simultaneous number 1's on Trackitdown's DnB and Dubstep charts, an official emerging artists feature by Beatport, and everyone from Sara Cox to even OGs Skream and Benga shelling out Hold Me on Radio 1 - it's safe to say, things were going swimmingly. Considering how much it connected with the cultural, admittedly Skrillex-obsessed zeitgeist at the time, it really was a good call to scrap that initial 174bpm version of Hold Me and go the 140bpm route, but what really made it stand out from the rest was the music video. Animated by Kristofer Ström & Erik Buchholtz and produced by Tamsin Glasson, this one tells a surprisingly emotional tale of undead lazer kittens, and not only racked up a ton of views, but also lead to a Best Dance Video (Budget) nomination at the UK Music Video Awards!

"We Have Begun Work On An Album" (2012 - 2016)

Turns out they would smash literally any and all of the records I just rattled off just a year later already, with their absolutely massive Down The Rabbit Hole EP. More specifically, with Get By. Sure, the tune itself went down very well and even had Annie Mac calling it her "special delivery" on her Radio 1 show, but once again, it was the music video that elevated it to actual madness. Created by indie filmmaker Ian Robertson, whose involvement with the Hold Me MV had to be postponed due to (space) time constraints, this one takes us on a wonderful journey through various classic board games, each presenting the banger's waveform with meticulously crafted stop motion shenanigans. As a YouTube commenter put it: "like Wallace and Gromit, but much skankier". Not only did it reach 2 million views in just a week (!), it was such a big thing at the time that it got featured by The Sun (?!), CBS News and even YouTube themselves, breaking into the UK Dance charts at #37 and garnering Delta Heavy even more Best Video award nominations. Criminally, winning none of them.

Safe to say that their style of somewhere between EPIC and evil cyborg elephant dying was starting to take off in a major (tom) way, and if the above paragraph didn't convince you enough, let me just rattle off all the other successes they were having just that year (2012!): Remixes for Emalkay, Adam F, Maverick Sabre (which also got some Annie Mac support) and Excision, an almost officially released, aggressive Dubstep rework of Rihanna's Unapologetic, a Nero bootleg that was downloaded more than 125,000 times and supported by both Skream and Zane Lowe, guest mix appearances on Triple J and SB.TV, and a tour that was frankly insane, spanning most of Europe, a lot of the US and Canada (including EDC), New Zealand and even Argentina. Plus, they announced they had started work on their debut album!

However, other plans and their own perfectionism kept getting in the way, but they still kept their listeners busy with remixes for Zomboy and DJ Fresh & Diplo, while touring the Aussie countryside with Frederick The Fifth and Graf IX, receiving proposals delivered via banner at Seattle's appropriately titled FreakNight during their North America tour with Subby Focaccia. With so much touring, there was little time for new originals, let alone album work, but thanks to some self-enforced months of living in the studio, and all sorts of 80s influences, especially Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack for Scarface, they managed to put together the fun romp that is the Apollo EP in 2014. On Badboy Style, initially known as RaveTrapJungle, they were even channeling some of the trap stuff that had started making the rounds at the time! Of course, they assured their fans, the album would follow later that same year.

What did instead follow was their rather huge single Reborn, symbolising a sense of starting over or moving on. To be fair, with the accompanying, yet again, immensely creative, Dali & Burton vibes emitting music video, directed by Chris Bristow and Ian Robertson, and remixes from June Miller and Spoils, they really did go all out. Plus, fans still got a remix for Oliver $ & Jimi Jules, supported by Zane Mac and Annie Lowe, guest mixes to scare the neighbors with for VICE, Crissy Criss' 1Xtra show, and DJ Mag, and they were already back to touring all over the place, going on a big ol' UK tour for Example and doing a whole Australasian thing.

As 2015 rolled around, Ben moved over to Los Angeles to stay with his partner, initially short- but eventually long-term, while Simon remained back home with his young family, but luckily, sick things still continued to flow out of their studio. One-off contributions to RAM's various various artistry compilations, a good batch of remixes for XYConstant, Martin Solveig and Valentino Khan, iconic bootlegs of Zhu's Faded and Major Lazer & DJ Snake's Lean On, some multi-genre Future House-y fun with Punish My Love, plus the obligatory accompanying music video by Nick Murray Wills - oh, and Ghost. With Valentina (Pappalardo) on the hauntingly beautiful vocals, they basically struck gold. Multitudes bigger than even their biggest previous hits, this instant classic is still one of the tunes people associate with them, and once again, returning champion Chris Bristow's truly excellent music video probably played a non-negligible part in that. Inspired by Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not The Answer, Chris explored the world of internet nostalgia, with our protagonist Clippy being hurled through the digital decades, from the tubular Windows 95 era screensavers to Chocolate Rain references all the way to the Snapchat era, rightfully earning himself another Best Music Video nomination.

Ghost remixes from Zomboy and Infuze, ghast mixes for Dancing Astronaut and Insomniac, boo!-ring all through Europe, USA, Australia and for the very first time also Japan - yeah sure, that's all well spooky and all, but the real paranormal news came around Spooktober: their debut album was actually, properly, for realsies even, announced to be releasing in March of 2016!

Paranice OST (2016 - 2019)

After another two upfront singles, the Gesaffelstein-esque title track and the one-two-DnPunch Oscillator / Fun House later, Paradise Lost, the duo's debut album, at least in title inspired by John Milton's classic poem, finally hit the digital shelves. Technically, a version of it was ready way earlier than that already, but at first they simply weren't 100% happy with all of the tunes that made up the LP at the time, and once that problem was solved, Sony / BMG's acquisition of RAM Records delayed it one last time. The delays took so long that the studio in Central London they started the album work in had not just moved location multiple times, but had since been closed altogether.

In their endless quest for timelessness, they had been soaking up literally anything and everything you could think of, from the usual (drum and) bassy lads like Sub Focus, Skrillex and Noisia, and synth based artists like Kavinsky, Giorgio Moroder and, of course, Hans Zimmer, to House, Techno, Grime and Indie, Future House and Bass, and even visual media like Inception, whose mindfuckering concepts lead to the creation of City of Dreams, Interstellar, which directly inspired the interlude Ascending, and the Treehouse Of Horror Simpsons specials, whose spookiness they tried to emulate on Tremors. Arguably all the waiting was well worth it, as the highly-anticipated hotchpotch of genres not only shot straight to #15 on the UK Dance Charts, but also cracked the top 10 of both US and UK electronic charts on iTunes!

The heavily Flume-inspired, once more sneakily featuring Ghost's Valentina, and all-around biggest breakout hit off the album, White Flag, earned itself both a whole EP release a few weeks after the album dropped, featuring the legendary VIP, remixes by Taki Nulight and Tisoki and album DLC in the form of Arcadia, and an out-of-this-world animated music video directed by Pixar's former technical director Najeeb Tarazi, retelling the aforementioned John Milton poem in the most wonderful retro videogame-y way imagineable. With further bangarangers like Kill Room, Bar Fight, remixes for Kaskade and DJ Fresh & High Contrast, their contributions to the virtual reality game Radial-G: Racing Revolved, and ad work for Xbox and Castrol's #CloneRival spot with Koenigegg, they filled up their plate even more, but Simon took it one step further and pushed out some real fun house productions on Skrillex' OWSLA together with Gavin from Loadstar as Paper Planes. No wonder they won the Best Producer award that year!

Of course, any good album drop has a post-release world tour attached to it, and this one was no different, with highlights including the incredible crowds in LA, Auckland, Vancouver and London, playing at St. Petersburg' infamous Pirate Station, their third consecutive sell-out show in Perth and the ridiculous stage productions at Beyond Wonderland. Everyone interviewing them at the time (2017) kept asking them about their touring plans, but since they literally never really stopped travelling, they keep having to say they already are on a tour. A massive, never-ending one. 12 (!) shows in one month, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, even India now - I'll keep that part short from here on out. What definitely does deserve a mention though is their very own Paradise Lost live show, representing the full spectrum of bass music with the likes of Culture Shock and Feed Me on support in London's very own Brixton Electric.

Speaking of: they also briefly ran a Paradise Lost radio show on iHeartRadio! Of course, that didn't put a stop to the guest mixes - in fact, during this time they spun plates on Friction's show, put together a Quest Mix for Annie Nightingale and even had the honour of curating one of the legendary Essential Mixes for Radio 1, fully cementing their place in the DnB Hall of fame. Even the release-side was still rather RAMmed, with grandiose hits like Gargantua, Gravity and Kaleidoscope, which also received the stop-motion music video treatment by Scott Peters, a remix for Zeds Dead and their wonderful reimagining of Hans Zimmer's S.T.A.Y, but in 2017, they started to branch out a little, with their Monstercat debut Stay, and followups Exodus and I Need You. Not to mention the various remixes by Stonebank, Tantrum Desire, Ray Volpe, PhaseOne, Maduk and many more!

Throughout their tours through the US, NZ, AU, and JP, rumours of a whole new big body of sopho-more goodness were making their way to various message boards and subreddits - but surely only in our dreams, right?

Dreamworks (2019 - 2021)

Well, if this was all just a dream, then please don't wake me up! During the rampup to the elusive second album, they smashed out a collaboration with none other than Zeds Dead, who approached them after their remix for him the year before, followed by the first official single of the actual promo phase: Take Me Home. Not only did it blend together rhythmic aspects of both Trap and DnB, they were also massively inspired by the vocal processing of Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek, with which they transformed Jem Cooke's already wonderful performance into a truly unique vibe. After years of their artistic perfectionism preventing any music videos for their various singles, they finally recruited Kun-I Chang and Shih-Wen Lin of Space Rabbit Studio for Take Me Home's music video, depicting the surprisigly emotional journey of two cute plush toys from claw machine to their forever home.

3 years, almost exactly to the day, after their first LP, it was now time for their follow-up effort, Only In Dreams! Unlike said debut, this one came together way quicker, with most of it being done in less than a year (except for Show Me The Light, which had been worked on since 2017), and was more or less simply a collection of their very best ideas executed to the best of their abilities, strung together by the Dreams concept, which had become something of a main motif in their songwriting during that time. Plus, they liked Inception. Another major difference: Whereas they had produced literally everything themselves on their debut LP, they were way more open to collaborations on this second one, with the likes of Modestep, KUURO, MUZZ, Everyone You Know and even some you don't jumping in on the features.

Reaching heights previously thought impossible, they went on an album tour so all-encompassing, it would probably be easier to list all the places they didn't go, with the NZ leg of it all selling out within mere days of it going live. They even took over the one and only XOYO during Andy C's residency back then! No wonder they won "Best Male Drum and Bass Artist" at the International Dance Music Awards that year. In their everlasting quest to take things beyond anything that came before, they started working on a brand new AV show called BEYOND, which they worked on via the archaic conferencing software Zoom and was set to be unleashed to the world at Rampage's indoor festival in March 2020. I wonder how that went. But first, they steamrolled the scene with remix after remix, first with a massive package for Lift You Up, and then in early 2020 with a truly insane collection for their entire album, featuring artists big and small in both DnB, like Teddy Killerz, ShockOne, Bensley, Kanine, Magnetude, DNMO and REAPER, and Dubstep and general bass music, like Clockvice, Hydraulix, LAXX and Hi I'm Ghost.

So March 2020 rolled around and... well, you know. However, they did not let a measly worldwide pandemic stop them from doing what they do best, and so they set out to deliver straight-up fire sets on Rampage's festival replacement stream, various UKF livestream setups and their very own audiovisual stream with MUZZ for the release of their collaborative single Higher Ground, while putting out RAMbunctious VIP's of their very first double single, collaborations with Kayzo and Koven on Monstercat and UKF respectively, and some remix work for the lovely Seven Lions. Obviously, aside from some New Auszealandria touring, things kinda slowed down a bit for the both of them, but the next big thing was just around the corner.

Mid Night SiamaBen (2022 - 2024)

As you probably already heard, post-acquisition RAM Records was slowly but very surely dying off, and while Ben and Si stuck around for longer than most, they too had to jump ship eventually. Enter their self-made label, Delta Heavy! With influences now including names like Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ramin Djiwadi, Michael Giachinno and quite a couple more I have quite frankly never heard of, and the genre influence range now extended to Pop, Electronica, Rock and Classical Music, their music, now with a bigger than ever focus on the drums and the basses, was more than making up for the perhaps slightly lacking creativity of the imprint name. With their No Gravity EP / almost-album - I was 100% convinced this would end up with evolving the E into an L at least - racking up streams by the millions with ease, things were going swimmingly, and slowly but surely, the constantly rotating AU and NZ tours were expanded to include some NA, and eventually even some EU again, culminating in yet another literally never-ending tour all across the globe.

With momentum firmly on their side, it was now finally time to jump back into madness that is releasing an album! Announced at the beginning of 2024, this new long player would take an unflinching look at their most favourite genre, creating a world where the night-out never ends, taking your body to a place of the kind of pure ecstasy that only the fattest tunes on a massive soundsystem can achieve, and taking your mind to another place of blissful existence - this is Midnight Forever.

Before we get into it, have a couple surprisingly dwarf-heavy fun facts from them:

  • They swear they saw a dwarf riding through the dance floor on top of a rhinoceros at Fabric one time
  • At a fairytale-themed forest party, they were greeted by someone cosplaying as Snow White - on stilts for some reason - hanging out with four non-stilted dwarfs, all in costume

Resources

Track Breakdown

Congrats, you've made it to the Track Breakdown!

1. Midnight Forever

Picture this: a dimly lit underground club, packed with people from all walks of life, brimming with youthful energy, far away from the stadiums and arenas, united by shared love for the music. This is the exact scenario title track Midnight Forever starts us off with. The almost anxiety-inducing atmosphere is elevated even further by an alluring yet automatonlike vocal mantra, hypnotising us into following the rhythm that is about to unfold before our ears: suave plucky synths, elephantesque roars, a truly weighty bassline, some rave-y melodies, moments of pure euphoria in the second half - and before you know it, it's 5 in the morning. Or well, it would be, if this midnight had an end!

2. Get Down Tonight (ft. Hayley May)

I've got a great idea: let's Get Down Tonight! Even the flakiest, most apathetic raver will get up from their comfy sofa when Yorkshire-originating but London-residing singer/songwriter Hayley May breaks out her quite convincing, frankly ridiculously catchy R&B tease-arguments on top of abrasively funky guitar and vocal snippet slices, especially when Ben and Simon get the chuggalicious bass engine going underneath it all. As if we weren't treated to enough funkiness yet, they paint the titular vocal snippet in multiple shades of Daft Punk in the vocoded breakdown, and as if Hayley's vocals on their own weren't wonderfully cheeky enough, the trio used all sorts of harmoniously satisfying layering to elevate it even further!

3. E-N-D

Where are we gonna get down on this fine Friday night, you ask? How about the E-N-D? I heard Andy C is playing! Named after and massively inspired by the roudy nights Ben and Simon experienced in their early raving days at the legendary London club The End, this Dancefloor smasher takes us even deeper down into the underground, where dirty basslines and oldskool rave sound effects reign supreme. In the midst of all this raw madness, a mesmerising loop of zoinked-out spoken word vocals by London-based Sarah Carton acts as us our anchor, and before long we can't help ourselves but chant along with its weirdly catchy lyrics. As a little pinch of modernity, we jump into the 4x4 pool for a bit, before returning to the syncopatented boom and chaks we are all obsessed with here.

4. Babylon (ft. YOU)

Nightlife isn't just a great place to get down and dirty, though, it's also able to transport you to places of otherworldly beauty, where all your problems simply fade away and you cannot help but just smile. Babylon is one such place. Featuring YOU, the voice and songwriting talents behind all sorts of huge hits by Galalalantis and Armin van Blahren, on the delightful vocals and apparently some hidden production by High Contrast, and with some truly outstanding, consistently tearjerking production, Babylon manages to shine bright even when compared to all the other Delta Heavy classics, as one of their most beautiful ever tunes. The purest of bliss.

5. Ecstasy

From one kind of happiness right back to the sort of Ecstasy only heavily pounding beats can provide, we continue on track numero quinto. A buildup so meticulously crafted and so awe-inspiringly hype-inducing that crowds all over the world have been caught in its hypnotic trap of imagination, fantasy, temptation and ecstasy - before being shocked into skank mode by a truly terrifically thumping, elephantesque-roar-featuring wall of 4x4. Don't worry, dear reader, syncopation follows later on!

6. Punching Holes

One might think our next stop, Punching Holes, is gonna take us right back into the epic landscapes of uplifting euphoria we are used to from the lads, especially considering Georgia Meek's commanding yet straight-up wonderful vocal performance, but the team had other plans for this one. Right at the apex of her roaring display, the Halsey-esque vibe the two, Georgia and Cameron Warren came up with is switch-ed out into some murky 2024 Jump Up inspired naughtiness, resulting in an immensely satisfying contrast between the initially massive instrumentation around the vocals and the heavy, low-end rumbling cheekiness.

7. Never Alone (ft. Hayley May)

Early on in their aforementioned R&B brainstorming sessions with Hayley May, they already knew they had to return to that well of conceptual gold one more time. What started out as an R&B-esque ballad about the connections we share with people close to us, was once more finessed into a chorus so ridiculously catchy it wouldn't surprise me to hear it's literally altering your brain chemistry while listening, which the lads then further garnished with high-speed chuggerinos, high-energy whompos and highly-satisfying drumingtons, into what we now know as Never Alone.

8. Bad Decisions (ft. Cameron Warren)

Next, we're dealing with the emotional turmoil losing a connection like that can cause, and the Bad Decisions that usually follow along with it. This time around, Cameron Warren wasn't just involved as a writer, but also as the man behind the moody guitar and the voice giving life to the emotionally chaotic impulsivity of a messy breakup. At first embedded into a softer, "emo" type of arrangement, Benmon eventually realised this one simply had to bang, and infused it with incredibly upfront drums pushing you to dance the pain away, while the emotional numbness heavily droning in your skull battles it out with a flurry of shots being chugged down one after another. Absolutely massive tune.

9. Anywhere

After 8 straight DnBangers, it's probably time to take out the tape and go for something different. Exploring the breaksy world UK Garage, Anywhere goes for the vibe with the absolute highest possible Delta to their usual Heaviness - fast-paced, consistently oscillating bassline hits, cheekily fluttering, otherworldly synth melodies, funky guitars joining in, and none other than Charlotte Haining on the lovely vocals. Delightful!

10. Delirium (ft. Subsonic)

Lucky for us, the non-DnB madness is over, as we smoothly slide on over to Delirium, featuring jump-up-turned-dancefloor DnBehemoth Subsonic! With the iconic Tom Cane delivering his all as always, this dream team not only hints at the chill yet danceably euphoric vibe of early rave music, they actually used the same flimsy, cheeky sounds found in classics like ATB's 9PM to transport us straight back to a simpler time in our lives. Incredibly lovely!

11. Nocturnal (ft. Grafix)

We keep on vibing throughout the night with Nocturnal, with fellow Aussie tour participant Grafix joining us this time around. Wonderful synths, a simple yet effective vocal, I bet this is gonna be lovely - until a rather massive siren disturbs the peace, radically shifting any expectations you and I might have had. But even with this warning shot, you are simply not prepared for the gut-churning filth that the trio is spewing at us as response to said humongous sirens firing off one artillery shot after the other. Like some sort of horrifically malfunctioning robot from another planet. I love it so much.

12. Sanctuary (ft. Lauren L’aimant)

After this rather nasty mood rugpull, we actually chill down a little bit with Sanctuary. With an ethereal, straight-up heavenly performance by Lauren L'aimant, (delta) heavily contrasting the anthemic work she did on Against The Tide, and once and for all proving she's not a l'ayman at all, the bois already struck pure gold, but together with the rolling drums keeping things energetic, the lowly rumbling bass warming your ears, and the marvellous pianos making my heart happy, they really smashed it out of the park. Gently.

13. Chasing Gold (ft. Jazmine Johnson)

The lads really know how to pick their vocalists. On Chasing Gold, they recruited up-and-coming vocalist, mutual friend and frequent collaborator of Cameron Warren, and hell in high heels visitor Jazmine Johnson and man, does she ever deliver the metal she is pursuing. Along with this stunner of a performance, also co-written by Cameron by the way, the duo treats us to a bouncy synth lead on top of more of the predecessor's rolling drums that in combination with the vocal continual ringing in the background give off some good ol' early 2010s Dancefloor vibes. Pure Euphoria!

14. Deep Down (ft. Ethan Holt)

On the other end of the vocal spectrum, Deep Down the octaves, we've got Ethan Holt, extremely talented and similarly both very much up-and-coming yet also kind of established, belting out both raspily rumbling registers and honestly hair-raisingly heartfelt higher notes, sometimes combined into one simply stunning, superb singing sandwich. As always, the delteam knows exactly how to transform this exceptional raw sauce into a straight-up anthem, with a melody that is almost annoyingly amazing, basses fiercely and rhythmically pleasingly contracting and the usual epicness we have come to love.

15. High On You

Last, but most certainly not least, we've got High On You with [REDACTED] on vocal duty. While apparently totally anonymous, this performance is bursting with that "putting your heart and soul into it" kind of beautiful passion that is both instantly sing-alongable and just hits you on such an emotionally deep level that you simply cannot help but fall in love with it. Together with the gorgeous backdrop in the buildup and the straight-up anthemic synth lead you can't help but chant along to, Ben and Simon have stuck the landing on a truly quintessential Delta Heavy tune here. I'm high on this tune. Blazed out of my mind really.

Conclusion

One might think with fifteen tunes, most of them falling into the Dancefloor DnB category, that it would eventually get tiresome. Nope. How? With wall-to-wall bangers, going from the exciting high-energy madness of an underground night-out to the anthemic festival sing-along vibes in the sun, with both lots of nostalgic rave vibes and more modern trends seamlessly woven into the mix, with memorable songwriting and clean yet powerful vocal processing at a level not many can compete with, and with truly unforgettable melodies. So unforgettable, in fact, I just need to glance at the tracklist and the melodies start playing in my head.

In this sea of straight-up anthems, it really isn't easy to pick out any particular favourites, but if I had to, I would go with Babylon, because it fills my heart with so much joy I get goosebumps just thinking about it, Nocturnal, since the massive bassface its back-and-forth causes each and every single time should be scientifically studied, and High On You, for its perfect combination of stunning vocal work and crazy addictive anthemic melodies.

TL;DR: The most infectiously catchy melodies, the most extraordinarily memorable vocal performances, the (delta) heaviest and yet also most perfectly precise production - easily one of my favourite album of the year, and my favourite LP of theirs altogether.