San Diego producer Mike Wallace has crafted an entire album using just one instrument, reviving the spirit of 1970s concept synthesiser records.
DJ and producer Mike Wallace has released Crawling Toward The Sun, an album created exclusively on the Melbourne Instruments DELIA synthesiser. The release marks a deliberate return to the creative constraints of classic electronic music, where artists like Mort Garson built entire worlds from single instruments.
Catch up on all the latest news here.
By limiting himself to DELIA alone, Wallace uses the limitations of one instrument as a creative advantage. Each of the album’s eight tracks explores texture, modulation and mood through the synthesiser’s six-voice bi-timbral engine, without any additional layering or sampling. The result channels the narrative ambition of early Moog albums whilst sounding unmistakably contemporary.
“Using only the DELIA meant every decision, every nuance, had to carry weight,” Wallace explains. “The instrument became partner, narrator and canvas.”
Thematically, the album traces an arc from seed to summit, beginning with “rooted from a seed, destined to withstand the climb” and returning to “back toward the sun” by its conclusion. Wallace recorded, mixed and mastered the entire project in 2025, treating DELIA as the sole voice of the work.
Melbourne Instruments introduced the DELIA in 2024 as a successor to their NINA polysynth, featuring motorised control surfaces, analogue filter options and extensive modulation capabilities.
Known for his eclectic DJ sets and record-digging, including five releases with Origin Peoples and a compilation of composer Piero Umiliani’s work, Wallace applies that same curation here, and has built a deep listening experience from purposefully narrow boundaries.
Crawling Toward The Sun is available digitally and as a limited edition cassette via Bandcamp. Check out Melbourne Instruments here.
