Vladislav Delay - Multila (2000)

Finnish electronic minimalist Sasu Ripatti returns later this month with his first album as Vladislav Delay in over five years, so time to dig out an early classic of his.  Although it's technically a compilation of two EPs, Ripatti regards Multila as a proper album in his discography.  It came from a fertile time in his career: "The Helsinki period... where I wrote lots of music and didn't do anything else", and the resulting EPs and this CD came out on Basic Channel's Chain Reaction, the sublabel used for their most avant-garde releases.

Basic Channel and Chain Reaction would prove highly influential on the dub techno and minimal techno scenes to come, and there's certainly long stretches of Multila that sound someone doing a Perlon DJ set at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.  None more so than the epic 22 minutes of Huone, the most propulsive track here that at least has a clear beat to follow throughout. 

Elsewhere, the rhythm tracks are submerged so far in the murk as to just offer a vague suggestion of where they should be, or reverbed/delayed into incoherence (as on Pietola) or absent altogether other than little blips of static (Karrha).  Regardless of how far from the dancefloor Multila drifts, it always ends up taking you on a journey into inner space that never stops paying its own reward.  Timeless, essential electronica.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Anima

Vladislav Delay - Anima (2001)

I'm guessing a nice chill-out might be what most people are after today - so here's an hour of ambient textures from Finnish electronic musician/producer Sasu Ripatti, aka Vladislav Delay.  This single-track release came out in 2001 - there was a triple vinyl edition, believe it or not.  Not the sort of thing where you'd want to be getting up to change sides every ten minutes!  I got into this about a year ago on the back of a recommendation someone had made on a chat about the sadly missed Susumu Yokota.


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