Delph

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About Delph

Early days

Delph were formed in the  early 1980s by KJ Pocock and Steven Smith.  We met at secondary school in Poole in Dorset, England when we were 11 years old. As close friends we had similar musical tastes and eventually formed Delph in our early twenties after leaving university. Originally called Mighty Joe Young, we changed our name very early on to Delph after Delph Woods, an area next to our old school and between Poole and Wimborne where we both lived. We wanted a name that was more local and personal. 

Our shared musical influences tended to be more experimental and included electronic music, dub reggae and post-punk/new wave. Artists such as early Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Eno, Fripp and Eno, Captain Beefheart, early Pink Floyd, Lee Perry, Erik Satie, Can, Gong, Faust, Bowie, The Associates and others.  

Starting out we bought a Moog Rogue analogue synth, a Roland TB-303 (for sequencing mainly), Roland TR-606 (for drums) to add to our existing guitar and bass guitar. We also bought a Fostex A8 8-track tape machine for recording - using SMPTE striping on one track for sync purposes. We didn’t have a computer in those very early days but later on we added an Atari ST computer running Pro-24, which then became Cubase.  Everything then was stored on floppy disks.  We bought and sold various equipment in the following years (including a Yamaha TX7 and Roland D-70) before settling on a Roland JD-800 synth, Roland XP80 synth, Ensoniq EPS sampler and more. By that time we were also running Cubase on a Windows PC.

In the mid 1980s, after leaving Dorset, we lived in London in various shared houses.  In Clapham in London we were lucky that our benevolent landlord Paul allowed us to use the basement room as a studio, which we did in the evening after work.  In the late 1980s we both moved to Manchester to live and work. At that time Manchester was in the international spotlight for the Hacienda nightclub and the dance music scene. It was a great time to be there :)  Our electronic music was not really dance floor orientated though, as we both came from a love of more experimental and ambient music.

In the 1990s we decided to start performing live. It was quite difficult to get gigs for our music but we did manage to perform at a few venues around Manchester including a Hungry Brain all-nighter at Jilly’s Rockworld when we were on at 3am playing to a very high and receptive audience :)  A Guy Called Gerald was the DJ that night. Then in 1996 we were invited down to London to perform the ‘parachute set’ at Whirl-Y-Gig in Shoreditch Town hall.  Whirl-Y-Gig was well known at that time and it was our largest audience to date, about 800 people. After Whirl-Y-Gig we decided to work on our album which took longer than planned. We didn’t know it at the time but Whirl-Y-Gig was our last live performance together. 

In the mid 1990s the Internet was still in the early days, but starting to gain more interest, and we decided to launch our own website - which was relatively rare at the time.  In those days of very slow dial-up connections our Delph website just consisted of basic images, text and small downloads. Streaming music, video, social media and all the stuff we take for granted now was a still a very very long way off.  Despite this our website did gain some interest and our music reached byond the UK - something almost impossible for us to achieve previously by ourselves. 

First releases (on compilation CDs)

In the mid 1990s a few magazines and record companies showed interest in our music and we had three releases on CD compilations:

'Tatra' - Future Music compilation - FMCD32

'Slow River' - Surrender to the Vibe - Phantasm Records PTM132

'Leaves' - Goa Transcendental - Rumour Records TRIPCD 8

Following on from these releases we decided to make our self-titled Delph album.  

Delph album

We had interest from some record labels to release our album but for various reasons this didn’t work out. Several times we got the response that they wanted it be more dance floor and club orientated but we didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t where we came from musically.  In the end we decided to form our own label, Blue Pool, and release it ourselves. We approached the Arts Council in the UK and they helped us too.

We were both working in day jobs and the album took about 18 months or so to finish.  We started it in late 1996 and finished it in 1998. We had a lot of original material and wanted an album that hung together and ebbed and flowed.  Several personal themes weave through the album.

A local Dorset theme is one theme. It is where we both grew up. ‘Waves intro’ and ‘Waves outro’, the tracks that start and finish the album refer to the Dorset coast together with ‘Coastline’. ‘Evening hill’ is a beautiful viewpoint in Poole which looks out over Poole harbour towards the Purbeck hills. The label name itself, Blue Pool, came from an area of water near the Purbeck hills.

Another theme is travel.  ‘Tatra’, ‘Leaves’ and ‘Caparica’ fall under this theme although Caparica was left out on the final album, together with some other tracks such as ‘Slow river’ (which refers to the River Stour in Wimborne).

The album artwork continued the personal and local theme. The front and back cover is a modified photo of Delph Woods and the centre-spread features a black and white photo taken by K J Pocock of Steve Smith and three other friends running down a hill at Dancing Ledge on the Dorset coastline.

The main equipment used for the album was all hardware. VST plug-ins had only been invented in 1996, when we started the album, and we did not use any soft synths or VST FX. The equipment used was:

Keyboards: Roland JD800, Roland XP80, Ensoniq EPS sampler, Moog Rogue

Percussion pads: Roland SPD-11

Mixer: Fostex DCM100

Sequencer: Cubase running under Windows 95

Effects: Boss SE50, ART FXR Elite

DAT: Tascam DA-30 II

After much work and track selection the album was mixed by us in 1998, straight to DAT. It was then mastered in a studio in Macclesfield in England for release on CD.  It was a long time ago, so our memory is hazy, but we think about 500 copies were pressed.

After the album

After the album was released we advertised it in The Wire music magazine and we sold a few copies.  Unfortunately it never ‘took off’ then in the way we hoped it might. Our marketing budget was close to zero :) In 1998 relatively few people used the Internet and social media was a long way off in the future.  This may have helped – who knows. We never released any more tracks after the album or played any more gigs.  After so many musically enjoyable years we mutually decided to end Delph in 1999.  We remain friends and, although primarily a visual artist, KJ Pocock decided in 2024 to make more electronic music again under the name Bluepool. 

Thanks for reading.