Delta Sleep - Student Choice

    One of my favorite bands is called Delta Sleep. They are based in England, and they are considered a “math rock” band. Their music can be very technical and use odd time signatures, which is why they are considered to be math rock, but I find that their music is much easier to attach to than other math rock is. Despite their use of complex and changing time signatures, the band’s songs are easy to move along to. I recently saw them live in concert in Richmond, and the experience was incredible. They played at a venue which had a stage that jutted out into the middle of the space. Fans could crowd around them on nearly every side of the stage, forming a huge undulating semicircle of roughly 200 bodies. This formation of people around the center stage was very reminiscent of the early Greek amphitheaters that we talked about in class. Better yet, the crowd reminded me of tribal rituals in which all members of the tribe dance around and sing loudly. I floated between the first and second row throughout the show, jumping, dancing, and singing as loudly and boisterously as I wanted to. I became sweatier and sweatier as the band played each of their songs, and so did everyone around me. By the end of the show, I could not even think of myself as an individual person in a crowd. I thought of myself as the crowd. We all moved together so beautifully and passionately and with the same focus - the music. This group-identity that I began to develop is the closest I think I have ever come to being able to understand the Tribal ideas of community. 

The band also has a very interesting approach to lyrics. Lyrics are not the focus of the song - they are merely an instrument within it. Much of Delta Sleep’s lyrics are about creation and the duty mankind has to preserve it. In concert, the lyrics did not stand out to me at all. The sheer loudness of the music and the swaying of the crowd drew me into the beat of the song, and the lyrics became largely irrelevant. Something that I found mind-blowing was the way all four of the band’s members stayed perfectly in sync with one another. Despite the complex nature of their music, they were perfectly in time with each other the whole time. This only added to my feelings of existing as a group with the people around me. 


April 20, 2022

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