Rock music is about expression, and few understand that better than future star D3LTA. The Anglo-Greek artist is destined to leave an impression with his debut album, Mad About It, a heady blend of contemporary and classic influences – from Talking Heads to David Bowie and Twenty One Pilots – that form a backdrop to pertinent themes of mental health, youthful disillusionment, yearning and isolation.
Born in Athens, Greece, to an English mother and Greek father, the musician born Roberto Koustas began learning the piano aged five, inspired by his father’s love of jazz music. “I was intrigued, and I wanted to learn,” he recalls. Weekly lessons were cut short, though, thanks to a strict teacher with no tolerance for her curious young student. Instead, he found rock music – the rebelliousness of bands like Green Day: “The music and the way they carried themselves really struck me.”
He started guitar lessons, determined that he was going to be a rock star: “This is a big deal in Greece – there haven’t really been any international breakthroughs since the early Seventies,” he explains. By the time he was a teenager, he’d earnt a place at Athens’ prestigious Conservatoire, and was writing his own music. With a clutch of original songs under his belt, he began honing his live craft, performing around Greece and opening for major homegrown acts: “It was good practise, because often no one gave a shit – it was hard getting people excited about something that sounded quite different to what they were used to,” he says.
It was a different story when he arrived in the UK, around 2019: “By then I’d developed quite a tough skin, but the crowds in London were so responsive, it was a whole new experience,” D3LTA remembers. He found a new manager, and had just started to feel he was gaining momentum when the world went into lockdown. But instead of panicking, his manager suggested he used that time to write as much as possible. D3LTA borrowed some recording equipment from a friend and, gradually, his album demos started to take shape. They were sent out to producers, and after beginning to lose heart – from one rejection after another – the legendary Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Kasabian) came calling.
“That’s when things really changed,” D3LTA says, “because I’d started to lose belief in my own writing abilities, thinking maybe I wasn’t good enough. And then Jim reached out.” At first, he didn’t believe this was the same man who’d produced some of his favourite albums of all time, from the Arctics’ game-changing debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, to Adele’s record-breaking debut, 19.
Working with Abbiss was the perfect antidote to D3LTA’s self-doubt: “He told me what he loved about my songs in so much detail, like he’d really spent a lot of time with them, and that was huge for me.” The sessions were alchemic: “What I loved about working with Jim was the fact that we seemed to gravitate towards the same desire to experiment, trying things that were maybe a bit odd,” he says. “That time with him really felt like the true beginning of my music journey.”
One of his earliest releases was the 2022 single “Strange”, opening with jangling indie guitar tones, a perfect contrast to D3LTA’s sonorous voice as he sings: “But somehow I wanna call your number/ Are you up for the game/ Or are you too afraid now?/ Stuck inside your comfort zone/ Oh don’t you know my world is made for two/ And I can’t play without you.” Nearing close to a million streams on Spotify alone, the song struck a huge chord in D3LTA’s native Greece, making the top 40 and, to this day, remaining in heavy rotation on national radio.
Meanwhile, D3LTA was out in LA trying to finish songs for the album, when his manager organised a writing session: three days with a team that included Neil Ormandy – the co-writer behind James Arthur’s mega-hit “Say You Won’t Let Go” who can also boast major collaborations with Bebe Rexha, Aloe Blacc and Paloma Faith – and John Nathaniel (Gwen Stefani, One Republic). “I was so grateful to work with those guys, because I had an initial fear that the chemistry wasn’t going to be right,” D3LTA, who had previously written all of his songs solo, admits.
Following his sessions with Ormandy and Nathaniel, he picked up his guitar and found a quiet room, writing what would become one of his best songs, “Daydream”, about the notion of being infatuated with someone. “Midnight Passenger” was inspired by his move to London and a flat in east London overlooking the train tracks. D3LTA would wake in the early hours, look out the window and see trains rumbling past, wondering about the lives of those people sitting in its carriages.
“Blabbermouth”, meanwhile, is a self-flagellating track about trying to get close to someone who’s hurting, only to feel you end up saying the wrong thing. There are soft strums of guitar and warm piano notes that flare up like a rare burst of sunlight, as D3LTA sings in husky, tender tones: “I’m trying to speak/ But I’m incoherent/ I’m chasing your pain/ But I can’t get near it.” On the bold and ambitious “Kids”, he channels Bowie on a slow-building anthem for younger generations, tapping into feelings of apathy, anxiety and alienation: “The world’s gone up in flames but it looks nice/ Blinded by neon lights, keeping us awake at night/ Anti-social suicide, just keep it all locked inside.”
Then there’s the sultry opener “Mad About It”, in which rock guitars and electronic synths collide to stupendous effect. D3LTA sings in his silkiest croon, caught in a situation that feels somewhere between dangerous and seductive: “Should I stay? I’m not sure/ But I can’t find the door/ Give me
everything, I want more/ In the eye of the storm.” That restless energy is heard again on “Animals”, a thrashing maelstrom that paces back and forth like a caged beast. The electric guitars snarl, the drums pound, and D3LTA sings in a punkish yelp as the track builds and builds with tension: “Looking for some action/ Another game to play/ We wanna be honest/ But tend to misbehave… Howling in the basement/ Haven’t seen light in years/ Roaming in the darkness/ Tryna dig our way out of here.”
D3LTA switches things up again with closer “Clouds”, a moving final statement for which he collaborated with Harrison “Harry” Koisser of the rock band Peace. “We met through Jim [Abbiss], as he was working on a Peace album around the same time,” he says, “and Harry had this machine that generated all sorts of weird drone sounds, which we ended up using for this track.” When he first wrote the song, D3LTA was struggling with his own mental health, but it was only in hindsight that he realised he may have written it as much for himself as for a friend who was struggling, too. It will surely resonate with anyone who’s been through dark times, with the affecting lines: “Your heart was built for healing/ So I know you’ll be OK/ And I promise you that the clouds will fly away.”
“I feel like this album will help listeners understand me, because although the songs were written at different moments in time, there’s still a strong throughline,” D3LTA says. “It’s a sonic print of who I am as an artist.” There’s no doubt that Mad About It will help D3LTA’s growing audience get to know him, while at the same time, helping them to feel understood, too.