STICKMAN RECORDS All Paths Diverge [VINYL]

delving is a studio project from multi-instrumentalist Nicholas DiSalvo, best known as the frontman of the long-running heavy psych rock band Elder. "All Paths Diverge" follows the 2021 debut album "Hirschbrunnen", continuing DiSalvo's unscripted path as one of the most unique songwriters in the psychedelic rock genre. After a decade and a half as frontman of the seminal progressive psychedelic quartet Elder, DiSalvo founded delving as a secondary outlet to express musical ideas that didn’t fit in the paradigm of his main band. Exploring instrumental music with a heavy focus on psychedelic rock, krautrock, early electronic music as well as ambient sounds, delving still showcases the evocative melodies and unique songwriting which are his trademarks. All Paths Diverge is delving’s second full-length and was composed - unlike its pandemic predecessor - in between time on tour and in studio with Elder. Culled once more from an ever expanding songbook of ideas, the album’s seven lengthy tracks are a snapshot of DiSalvo’s current musical interests and love of sound exploration and remain evasive of genre confines. Intended as a subtle rebuff of the old adage “all roads lead to Rome”, the album title All Paths Diverge asserts that change is inevitable and nothing set in stone. DiSalvo says: “While looking back on the songs I wrote for this record over the past years, I was struck by how much has changed in my life and in the world since the first delving album came about in the height of the pandemic. This music is for me nostalgic and every part in each song brings back a memory of where I was at when writing it. I think it’s a very diverse album and that in itself a reflection of the fact that we’re all in flux, and that that’s a beautiful thing”.