West Midlands-born, London-based experimental/electronic/production duo Delmer Darion first broke through with their highly conceptual 2020 debut album Morning Pageants. Now, Tom Lenton and Oliver Jack are back with more high-concept material. Featuring Spencer Radcliffe and Martha Skye Murphy, “First Photograph Of The Nebula In Orion” is an exploratory, multi-faceted journey that sounds like listening to Mount Eerie in a late 19th century attic.

“The song is a response to the photograph it’s named after,” explains Lenton, “which was captured by an amateur astronomer named Henry Draper in 1880. I was reading about how dry photographic plates work. That got me thinking about how it feels to remember someone that’s been out of your life for a long time. So it’s partly ekphrasis and partly about piecing memories together.”

“I first heard Spencer’s album Hot Spring at the beginning of the pandemic,” adds Lenton of working with Radcliffe. “It’s comfortably my most played album over that period. We wanted to guard against the track sounding melodramatic; Spencer’s voice is so beautifully earnest and kind, we thought he’d be perfect for it.”

Listen to the sprawling, uncanny “First Photograph Of The Nebula In Orion” below.