Delphic
‘Acolyte’
(Polydor)

Many of 2009’s brightest sounded like the future as imagined in 1980; Delphic, ingeniously, instead choose to explore the future as imagined ten years later, all mainstream-shattering indie nous and breathless dancefloor triumphalism, and it turns out to be a bold, brilliant call. These are songs primed for festival detonation come the summer, but they’re a joy on the stereo too; ‘Counterpoint’ retains its early-Orbital crescendous majesty, ‘Red Lights’ sees cascading guitars and where’s-the-party synths wrestling to out-twinkle one another, ‘Submission’ is hellbent on fusing the epic end of Europop with cuttingly contemporary electro elements, and the central title track shimmers and seduces with laserbeam techno trickery and pastoral playfulness. It’s the best Manchester debut since ‘Lost Souls’, and the best start possible to the new decade.

Iain Moffat