VLADISLAV DELAY QUARTET
Vladislav Delay Quartet
HJRCD56
Honest Jon’s Records 2011
08 Tracks. 62mins00secs

VLADISLAV DELAY
Vantaa
RN136
Raster-Noton 2011
08 Tracks. 61mins05secs

Vladislav Delay Quartet
Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM
Vantaa
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

A man of many guises, Sasu Ripatti heads yet another project, and this time, he has adopted a similar geometry to Moritz Von Oswald’s improv trio, in which Ripatti appears on drums and percussions, as he gathers his own quartet. Although the Vladislav Delay Quartet has been in existence for some time, this eponymous effort is their debut release, published, quite fittingly, on Honest Jon’s.

Formed of Sasu ‘Vladislav Delay’ Ripatti (drums and percussions), Lucio Capece (bass clarinet and soprano sax), Derek Shirley (double bass) and Mika Vainio (electronics), the quartet operate at the murkier end of the music spectrum. The album opens with the corroding breathing of a machine which only seems to get nastier as the track unfolds. Right from the start, Vainio taints this project with industrial tones, leaving the rest of the formation out in the cold. At the half way mark, ill fragments of clarinet can be heard emerging from the dense sonic fog, followed by hints of drums, but if Shirley contributes at all, his input remains entirely shrouded in toxic dust. Later, a build up of abrasive electronics appears to progressively grind Hohtokiki down, hinting again as Vainio’s Pan Sonic past, and here, it is almost as if he acted alone, progressively eroding his own fabrication until nothing of it is left.

Things take on a different path as the quartet proceeds more like a coherent ensemble through the dim corridors of Santa Teresa, punctuated by a single bass note throughout, as rampant electronic shimmers provide the backdrop for slithering slabs of sax, some processed, others untouched. Des Abends continues the trend, but the quartet progresses through a more chaotic landscape here. Vainio scatters dense electronics over Ripatti’s increasingly disjointed percussions and Shirley’s equally fragmented bass part. Capece appears to be absent for most of the piece but eventually emerges from the darkness toward the end. The mood is even more obscure on pieces such as Presentiment, cast in a post-nuclear late jazz atmosphere, or Louhos, as swirls of sax wrap themselves around a seismic beat, but elsewhere, the quartet branch out toward slightly more welcoming grounds for a while, with Killer The Water Bed showing the formation is an almost entirely acoustic mode, wouldn’t it be for the recurring rumbles which lurks in the background. It’s only as the four reach closing piece Salt Flat that the mood settles on a slightly less intense note.

There is nothing of the dystopian avant-jazz of the VDQ on Vantaa. The tenth Vladislav Delay album is also his first for Raster-Noton, and here Ripatti returns to the more familiar textured atmospheric surroundings he has been skillfully developing over the last twelve years. Infused with dub-heavy grooves and textures, Vantaa is classic Delay material. Following the acoustic escapade of his last effort, Tummaa (The Leaf Label), this is like a return to Ripatti’s core source material, but it is one that’s been so painstakingly modeled and refined over the years that it continues to intrigue and captivate.

The soundscapes are for the most part extremely dense and intricate, with a very particular dynamic running pretty much through the whole record. Melodies are scarce and rarely manage to exist out of the sonic mass for long enough to have any lasting impact. It is easy to rapidly lose any notion of where exactly one is on this album as each each track is engineered to resemble the one before it, its sonic space defined by layers of muffled sound waves and comatose rhythmic patterns. Right from the opening moments, Ripatti’s ethereal fog covers everything and renders sounds with vague outlines. If percussions or instruments can be substantiated, they never can be identified for certain. Interestingly though, despite the nebulous aspect of the music and the intense sonic processing, it is the incredible detailing of these soundscapes which rapidly becomes the most prominent feature here. Tiny components are scattered throughout and define these compositions, whether it is the rhythmic flow of Henki, the tiny percussive particles which floats near the surface of Narri, the bubbling electronics of Vantaa or the pulsating dub of Levite.

Lauma therefore sounds even more of an oddity in this set up. Here, Ripatti tears up the subdued soundscapes and grooves of previous pieces to inflict a surprisingly fierce and relentless beat which only gains in intensity as the track progresses. The infinitely more subtle Levite and Kaivu are a welcome relief from such pressure, and conclude this album on a slightly lighter note.

Although both bearing the Vladislav Delay stamp, these two records, released in the space of a few weeks, display very different sides of Sasu Ripatti’s work. He has long established a plurality of sort with his various projects, and the fresh sound of the Vladislav Delay Quartet fairs well against the more established and polished set up he continues to refine as Vladislav Delay, and it certainly brings a very different dimension to Ripatti’s work, giving it a slight edge over Vantaa.

Vladislav Delay Quartet: 4.9/5 Vantaa: 4.7/5

Vladislav Delay | Honest Jon’s Records | Raster-Noton
Vladislav Delay Quartet
Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM
Vantaa
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM