Nick DiSalvo has spent a decade scuffing the boundaries between doom metal and progressive rock with US guitar wranglers Elder. The exploratory DNA embedded within that band’s music is front and centre on this striking debut album from his sideproject, Delving, even if its six instrumental tracks favour soft experimentation over swivel-eyed excursions in music’s outer dimensions. DiSalvo recorded Hirschbrunnen in his adopted home of Berlin during lockdown and it bears the imprint of both. Ultramarine’s trancelike bass and washes of period piece electronics could have been copped from a great lost mid-70s krautrock album. Similarly, in lieu of regular external stimuli, DiSalvo has opted to travel inwards: The Reflecting Pool and 11-minute closer Vast map out imaginary topographies in which sharp edges barely exist and melodies billow and bloom before vanishing. The only conspicuous flash of guitar comes in Wait And See, which had otherwise been content to noodle along in a jazz-rock world of its own. It’ll satisfy devotees of the heavier end of Elder’s output, but for everyone else, there are plenty of other landscapes to explore.