The first detail that really stuck and felt particularly relevant when I began sessioning Derbyshire guitarist par excellence Nick Jonah Davis’s new album, Rose Delta Rising, is the recording location. Black Bay Studio is situated in the Outer Hebrides and overlooks the staggering landscape of that area: windswept hills and clear bodies of water. There is something magical and otherworldly about the Hebrides; a starkness and raw beauty that Nick manages to distil into his set of songs.
Part of this character is down to Nick choosing clean electric guitar for the album; with no natural additions of string buzzes, fret sound or the wooden reverberation of a guitar body, the music exists by itself. This is a point Nick further accentuates through his use of notes and the spaces around them. It is beautifully demonstrated on Spoonbill (video premiere below), a slide piece that utilises Neal Heppleston’s spare bass notes, Joe Danks’ quiet drum patterns and Richard Birkin’s subtle string arrangement. The extra instruments frame a clear and precise slide refrain and yet further enhance the spaces in the music, when each player allows a beat as part of the sound.
Nick is a master of allowing tunes to gestate and refining them over time and through different versions. Some of the tracks here will be recognisable from past releases, having been considered and re-recorded. On Split Electric, Nick’s 2016 album with C Joynes, Poa Kichizi is a furtive, spiky piece of electric guitar; on Rose Delta Rising, the edges are smoothed by silky bass and drums, resulting in a more ‘finished’ song that nicely contrasts with the original.
The Whistle on the Woolf from 2022’s When the Sun Came is an interesting beast, with a Weissenborn guitar part surrounded by field recordings of bird song and natural sounds, giving the music a humid feel. Here, there is a dose of melancholy and drama in the mix, with earnest strings giving way to minimal drums and occasional bass notes. This broader range, with the strings and a slow tempo, completes a song that sounds very deliberately solid yet somehow elegiac, like a deserted castle.
As we know from pieces like All Them Symbols on When the Sun Came, and from being a dab hand at perfecting a tune, Nick is not afraid of experimental music, and that is apparent here on songs like the title track and Peter and the Lark. The former apparently emerged from an additional string part from Richard and uses the bowed notes to wrap around searching guitar picking, while Peter and the Lark takes eight minutes to build its minimalist soundscape. Beams of slide guitar wail into space, with spare picked notes providing some harness, evoking images of a lighthouse shining far out onto the dark sea.
It is always an exciting prospect having one of the UK’s key guitarists releasing a new album, and Rose Delta Rising is certainly worth the wait. Tunes that have been with Nick for many years surface here in a clean, precise guise, feeling very much like finished articles, while some pieces have a newness that perfectly balances the more composed-sounding songs.
With the addition of a band experienced enough to play only the notes required and happy to allow plenty of space to surround the music, Rose Delta Rising sounds like a musician very much in control of his craft and clear on his objective. This is a very elegant and accomplished set that feels like a distillation of Nick’s work over the years. Musically adventurous, impeccably recorded and performed, Rose Delta Rising is his best expression yet.
Rose Delta Rising (September 4th, 2026) Eiderdown Records/Cardinal Fuzz
Bandcamp: Eiderdown Records (US) | Cardinal Fuzz (UK)