On the eve of Manchester disco-rock trio Delphic's debut California show at this year's Coachella in April, the dreaded Eyjafjallajokull eruption thwarted their flight and forced a cancellation. When they finally made it back to our fair shores Thursday night, they were all set to play a clandestine set in the Dangerbird Records offices in Silver Lake, when an even more powerful force of nature peeled off a good half of their audience -- the Lakers winning Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

It can't be too thrilling to watch half your crowd wander from your debut West Coast set to cheer on a game you don't care about on an adjacent television. Fortunately, when the band makes its proper debut at The Echo tonight (with the thrilling minimal house alchemist Pantha Du Prince), they should have a less-distracted audience.

The new Dangerbird signees have one of the year's most ambitious and sheer pleasurable debuts in "Acolyte," a hugely accomplished splicing of earnest pop songwriting, ephemeral house textures and a percussive restlessness that takes a song from the center of a rave floor to the fringes of Warp Records and back again.

Delphic has pulled off one of the hardest tricks in pop music -- to swing for the commercial fences while taking decades of experimental music with you. But for guitarist-producer Matt Cocksedge, like everything else with Delphic, the American debut of "Acolyte" is long, long overdue.

"I read something where Charlie Kaufman said that making art is like giving birth," he said. So on that timeline, "now our album is getting beaten up at school and we're hoping it gets good grades."