An EP of four tracks – a format Steven Bonaventure approached deliberately while recording Delirium between Essex and Reading. Twenty minutes of music built on a combination of Cocteau Twins and Brandy – influences so disparate that you wonder how anyone could even connect eighties ethereal wave with nineties technical R&B. Turns out you can, if you run both sources through synthesizer fog and club rhythms, then record the result as if November drizzle hangs outside the studio window.

His debut album The Door is Open went into space, Delirium stays on earth, only this earth is shrouded in such dense fog that you can only distinguish details by straining your hearing. All four tracks exist in the space between the club floor and the bedroom ceiling. Bonaventure sings about love intimately: for him, it’s a physical substance that can be touched, dissolved in air, and then reassembled piece by piece. His vocals are technically strong – you can hear that he knows how to sing – but what’s more interesting is how he uses this technique. The voice appears and disappears in the arrangements, drowns in reverb, breaks through delay, and this is a conscious choice, not production carelessness. The cover promises thick cold fog, and fog here is truly the main character.

The first track, “Ghosts,” is a slow ballad where the tempo allows you to examine all the details of Bonaventure’s vocal work. The backing vocals function as a separate layer – they hover above the main part, creating an angelic choir effect. But the main vocal line is hypnotic in its stasis: it barely moves melodically, instead Bonaventure works with timbre, with intonations, with microdynamics. The synthesizers here create a cold space, but the arrangement is warm – this contradiction works better than if all the elements matched in temperature. The lyrics about ghosts of past love receive a surprisingly bright reading: minor harmonies neighbor with clear timbres, and the result sounds more like reconciliation with loss rather than mourning for it.

“Trouble“ brings back tension, but now it’s directed inward. The compositional arc moves from introspection to liberation, and Bonaventure manages this transition through the dynamics of delivery. The verses are quiet, almost whispered, the choruses open up with an optimism that here looks like a conscious act of will.

“Rouge Distortions“ is a ballad without any qualifications – slow, enveloping, built around synthesizer flows that occupy the center of the sonic picture. The vocals here stop fighting with the arrangement, they float above it freely, and this sense of freedom after the previous track feels earned. The melodics remain within the framework of classic R&B – ascending lines in the chorus, restrained verses – but the timbral solution takes the composition in a different direction.

The final track, “What Happened To The Dreamer?“ begins with Bonaventure’s vocals drowning in synthesizer chords, and then emerging from there with such desperation that you want to check if everything’s alright. The dance structure here is aggressive – pulsating, insistent, demanding. The artist’s voice rushes between two states: in the verses it’s almost ghostly, hovering somewhere above the instrumental backing, in the choruses it breaks forward as if overcoming the physical resistance of the music. This is synthpop in form, but the romanticism of the lyrics turns the danceability into something strange and painful. I’ve heard plenty of R&B with dance elements, but usually everything’s agreed upon in advance: either a club story or a slow ballad. Bonaventure makes them argue with each other within a single composition.

Delirium works as a unified whole, though it consists of only four tracks. The EP enriches R&B with elements that are usually beyond the genre’s boundaries. The haziness of the sound works as a visual image: the narrative moves through it, it hides and reveals details. This is a cinematic quality – all four tracks receive their own visual identity through timbral solutions, but all four parts are connected by a unified atmosphere.

Reading gave Bonaventure space to refine the style laid down in Essex, and Delirium captures the result of this evolution. The cosmic themes of previous works are grounded through autumnal imagery and club rhythms. This is R&B reconsidered through the prism of synthpop and dance structures, where romanticism combines with tension, and warmth exists within cold haziness.

Twenty minutes turned out to be sufficient to construct a complete statement about love, loss, and reconciliation. Steven Bonaventure has arrived at a formula that expands the boundaries of R&B while remaining within the genre’s framework. Vocal virtuosity serves as an instrument for conveying emotional states. The arrangements work for the dramaturgy, the haziness of sound transforms from an effect into an aesthetic principle. Delirium immerses the listener in a state where all emotions are heightened, all sounds are wrapped in reverb, and love turns into a ghost. Bonaventure proves that four tracks are enough if you know what to do with them. Here, he knows.

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