Vladislav Delay “Tummaa” Review
Published by StrangeGlue Magazine. Written by David Morris.

I got into Radiohead (stay with me) via something that one of the Gallagher brothers said about Kid A. I was sixteen at the time, and although I had heard Just, Karma Police, Paranoid Android etc etc on Anthems of Nineteen Ninety Something none of my friends had their albums and I had never got my hands on one. There was a time bomb ticking away.

Then along came a Gallagher, who snipped the blue wire by dismissing it as Space Jazz or something. At least that’s what I remember. I was sold, I went out and bought the record and had what was for me at that time a musical awakening. My “your enemy, my ally” reaction was not down to a love of Blur (‘cause I didn’t), not due to media portrayals of brash antics, and not just because my friends and I at the time harboured serious, entirely unfounded prejudices against the North. ‘Cause Cornwall (and North means anywhere beyond Plymouth) hasn’t exactly birthed many major cultural exports now has it? Oh, except the steam engine and Rootjoose, who I’ll have you know went to my secondary school!

I’d like to believe that my anti Oasis stance was mostly founded on some growing awareness of the bland, homogenising nature of the music industry. The packaging of an image, pseudo anti-conformism, School beyond School… As such I was a prime audience for something so radical as an Indie Rock band making space jazz. But of course it wasn’t that radical at all, not that it needs to be… It is a beautiful album of imaginative sound built upon the solid foundation of understandable song-forms. It is neither abrasively discordant, micro-tonal, dehumanised or shocking; it’s the blossoming and tempering of the experimental side of a skilled group of musicians and songwriters. A group who understood the need to challenge themselves and their audience. Beyond my field of reading all manner of people were recognising what an achievement it was, but to me it was an outcast.

Nowadays the Liam one is telling The Times that Radiohead fans are “boring and ugly”, and Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay) is making the real space jazz on a remote island in the Baltic Sea. Everyone has a point at which the taper of their imagination fails to be lit by abstract compositional forms. Some days it’s just down to a damp fuse, sometimes it’s an act of refusal. Yesterday I ranted at my housemate that the term sound art was akin to “calling a gun a bang-stick”. But this isn’t being sold, or propped up as “sound art”. It’s music, plain and simple, available on multiple formats from the Leaf Label; the same good people that brought you Susuma Yokota, Murcof and A Hawk and A Hacksaw. The press release speaks of Ripatti’s lifelong love of jazz and a new direction; a return to acoustic sound sources, “avoiding as much electronics as possible, wanting to bring myself closer to my background as a drummer and percussionist.”

On ‘Melankolia’ Craig Armstrong’s multiple piano parts weave in and out of the drips, sometimes with shimmering clarity and sometimes submerged. Strange sounds whiz by, engorged sonar blips return from the offbeat, random bursts of Tropicalian percussion appear and disappear like poltergeists. Tummaa means dark, or darkness; a theme which I had discerned in the music before reading the album titles’ translation. Objects appear suddenly, and disappear quickly. The sampled percussion is often clipped, evoking flashes of light.

At a distance from the actual music I can envisage how the imagination could be pervasively animated by such sounds, but for me it just doesn’t interact enough to translate into a captivating experience. Not yet anyhow. The strange oscillating sounds on ‘Kuula (Kiitos)’ are intriguing and verge on the truly hypnotic, particularly when contrasted against the icy surges in the background. ‘Mustelmia’ reminds me of the sounds employed by Kieran Hebden on his most recent collaborative record with Steve Reid (NYC, reviewed here), while also sounding a little like the soundtrack to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

There is a stillness and a serenity in this music, something that requires an investment from the listener in order to achieve movement and transition. That investment is probably stillness, a dedicated space for music which refuses to force its way in. This is no bad thing; it does make me wonder what all this rushing about has really been in aid of. It could also be augmented by drugs. Although I can appreciate the sounds and the way in which they have been recorded, processed and configured, it’s just a bit too space jazz for these ears right now. That said, I do love the way ‘Toive’ veers from what sounds like a distant, unrecognisable, ring modulated spurt through various shades of recognized sources into a forceful surge of resonance over a dead simple marching beat; which loses its step before returning reconfigured. It reminded me of the descriptions of music and motive ability given by Oliver Sachs in his seminal book Awakenings.

To be honest, there are many expanses contained in these sixty-six minutes and I feel like I have just landed. Trouble is, I’m half tempted to put my headphones on and listen to some songs.