Delphic - Soul in the machine

Well, it might not be the "cut-up technique", the random cutting-up and reassembly of words on paper favoured by David Bowie and Brian Eno, but Delphic's way of getting ideas for lyrics and melodies is trying its hardest. They call it "sleep band". Each of the Mancunian three-piece keeps a dictaphone under the pillow as they fall in and out of the early stages of sleep. Ideas pop in, and are then blurted out.

"Often your brain puts up barriers," explains Delphic's multi-instrumentalist, Rick Boardman, in an Italian restaurant in Brighton, half an hour before the band is due on-stage nearby. "Someone once told us that the best time for writing is when you're hungover because your brain can't be bothered to tell you 'don't do that', just go with it. It's the same kind of thing when you're dropping off to sleep, you're accessing your subconscious."

Such levels of Eno-esque planning would make the ambient guru proud, though it is the band's blend of celestial electronica, humming bass-lines and anthemic song arcs that has got critics' pulses racing. It's already been a good year for Delphic, just a month in. They were named third in the BBC's influential "Sound of 2010" poll (behind Marina and the Diamonds and Ellie Goulding) and their debut album, Acolyte, released earlier this month, reached number eight in the charts.

"Yeah, it's very strange," says the guitarist, Matt Cocksedge. "These charts that we grew up with and then to suddenly have our name in them. It's great that people got the record and are hopefully into it. But we try to look at the record in a long-term way. Chart success is one thing, but trying to sustain that and get the record out across the year, that's really important."

As people, Delphic show surprising levels of maturity, considering that Cocksedge, Boardman and the lead singer, James Cook, are still all only 24. They are veterans of Manchester's Snowfight in the City Centre, an embryonic if weaker version of Delphic giving rise to an early version of Cocksedge's Rickenbacker-slinging. The trio – who are working with the drummer Dan Hadley, though he is not credited as a permanent member of the group – first "met because we were all in bands around Manchester" and have since been virtually inseparable. When Cook and Boardman were studying music at the University of Salford, the former lodged with the latter's family. Music was always instilled into their lives. Boardman's father is a lawyer who spends his spare time building synthesizers. Cocksedge's father is a doctor, and his mother is a music teacher. Cook jokes that his father sold a train referred to on Kraftwerk's "Trans- Europe Express" (the consensus is that this is a lie). In 2004, Boardman settled on a mission statement: "electronic music with a soul". Around 18 months ago, the trio decamped to a friend's secluded cottage in Grasmere, Cumbria, to write the record.

"It had no TV, no central heating, we wanted to get away from everything," says Cocksedge. "We spent three weeks there and ended up writing half the album. We just ended up getting really inspired. We made the decision early on to have a concept rather than to randomly grab at ideas, so in that way I guess we were inspired by Kraftwerk. Then, when we've done that, we want to ditch the concept and move on to something else."

Last April, their debut single, "Counterpoint", was released on the Belgian techno label R&S. The website Pitchfork praised its Manchester sensibilities, its "bold synth, piston-like rhythm, guitar as, erm, counter, not focal, point", Cook's reiterated refrain "tell me nothing's wrong today" the focal point of an exciting debut that oiled the wheels of a hype juggernaut that continued into the summer. Their follow-up single, "This Momentary", appeared on the French label Kitsuné Maison and kick-started a spate of major-label interest.

When it reached its fevered apex, towards the latter half of last year, Boardman and Cook were teaching keyboards and guitar to kids in a local music store while fielding calls from major labels. In the end they did things their way: they set up their own label, Chimeric, under the aegis of Polydor, a concession to what the band claims is their almost obsessive paranoia about retaining control.

"We had just watched other bands mess it up," says Cocksedge. "We had just heard stories and we didn't want things to be taken away from us. When more people come on board and get involved, everybody has ideas. When they get inside your head, they slow down the process. Luckily, now, we're able to have it how we want most of the time."

The band toyed with the idea of producing the album solely themselves (ultimately, they maintained a hand in it) but this caused its fair share of arguments. There were failed attempts to hook up with Tom Rowland from The Chemical Brothers, along with Orbital's Paul Hartnoll. They eventually settled on Ewan Pearson, a sophisticated remixer and electronica producer; his work on the album was completed in Berlin, and is the key to giving their somewhat Eighties-influenced sound a contemporary veneer.

The temptation when describing Acolyte is either to refer to it as "genre-defying" or to exhaustively list its influences. Another easy fix has been for people to compare them to a famous indie-dance outfit from Manchester made up of three former members of Joy Division. Delphic were two years off birth when "Blue Monday" was released in 1983, but Acolyte can seem like a rave-y version of Brotherhood, New Order's 1986 album, which features its own choral harmonies, ray-gun synthesizers and euphoric moments. Aside from its more poppy sensibilities, Acolyte has a stand-out ambient track, "Ephemera", which has prompted comparisons to Orbital.

The band work on ideas in the flat they share in Manchester. "We know it's going to be hard work," says Boardman. "Living together is a risk. You end up writing at three or four in the morning... rather than sticking to certain patterns. Maybe for the next album we'll all move to opposite ends of the country and try and write it from there."

Cocksedge chimes in to say that the album was planned as a concept rather than as a collection of singles. "We wanted something cohesive, with high-energy moments, and more emotional, shimmery moments," he says. "We had a very strong idea for how we wanted our music to come across from the beginning. We always put the music first; we didn't want to be a factory. We fought hard to retain that original vision."

So, presumably, the immediate future will involve feeding off the success, some touring and a chance to lay their nano-Korgs to rest? "We are pretty restless as people," says Cook, speaking for the first time. "We may move away from Manchester; we may move to Paris; we may move to New York. If we did move to Paris, it wouldn't matter what the record label said... we would probably get into Ed Banger or Phoenix. It could be the most minimal of techno. We're happy with the direction it's going and have firm ideas. We like to keep on challenging ourselves."

"People wonder why we are miserable," says Cook, as they settle the bill. "But we are not actually miserable. We are just tired. We live together. And people will get up at three in the morning and you'll get a knock at the door and someone will say 'I have this idea. What do you think?' And just as you're going to sleep, you'll get this idea in your head and begrudgingly you have to record it because it's your job. So you don't get to sleep until five or six and then up again at 10..."

"And that's when you realise what you recorded last night was quite crap," adds Cocksedge, with a grin.

'Acolyte' is out now on Polydor; the single "Halcyon" is out on 15 March