Vladislav Delay - Isoviha

new sasu on planet mu:

"Isoviha was recorded four years ago, inspired by ideas that Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay) had been reflecting on for a long time. This album is a counterpart to his two Rakka albums which were a personal reflection on the nature and sound-world of the northern Arctic wilderness, 1000 kilometres north of where he lives on the Finnish island of Hailuoto. It's an area he loves to explore, trekking out alone to enjoy its rugged power. However the sound world of Isoviha is a return to man-made civilization.

Musically Isoviha presents a more complicated world than Rakka; overloaded and unpredictable, audio archaeology that layers and juxtaposes everyday sounds into intense sculptures of noise and drone. As a musical observation internally and externally, it's influenced by the heightened anxious intensity Sasu feels when returning from the empty wilderness. The ratcheting up of urban noise on Isoviha is built with insistent loops that seem to malfunction the faster they spiral and the dangerous overwhelming potential of ordinary objects and events: shimmering, hammering, crowds, radio distortion, ancient backfiring engines. It's hypermodern musique concrète, married to a jazz drummer's intuitive sense of rhythm.

Going back even further in time but still tethered to the local, Isoviha also means 'the great wrath' and refers to a time in Finland under Russian occupation in the 1700s. A time when all the Islanders of Hailuoto were killed, apart from a single couple who were left to bury the dead. As if time is non-linear, the response to toxicity and madness that drives the album feels even more appropriate now than when it was written four years ago and confirmation that the horrors of the past still darken the present."

Hyped. Loved both Rakka albums. This sounds like a bridge between the harshness of that and the dubbed out broken rhythms of his previous albums.

It seems he has been really angry lately. Love him, tho I enjoy more his etheric ambient glitch style.

He really needs to stop putting all that gravel in the dishwasher - Gonna completely break the filter

Didn't like Rakka much so unsure about this one.

Wish he'd make some more wonky dub techno but he has earned the right to do what he wants.

  On 5/25/2022 at 7:25 PM, Richie Sombrero said:

Didn't like Rakka much so unsure about this one.

Wish he'd make some more wonky dub techno but he has earned the right to do what he wants.

Just wait until you hear the Whistleblower 2022 re-record/remaster.

https://vladislavdelay.bandcamp.com/album/whistleblower-2022

Siiiick i can't wait!!! 

Hyped for this one 

Look like he's gonna release a collection of tracks where he collaborated with Norwegian jazz guitarist Eivind Aarseth later this summer.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/vladislav-delay-eivind-aarset/singles/

Brutal album. Loving it.

Boomkat:

Blizzard-in-a-workshop, singeli-noise styles from Vladislav Delay, committing his noisy ass to Planet Mu after an acclaimed bout of footwork under his lesser-spotted name Ripatti in ’21

‘Isoviha’ sees the Finnish maverick push the ravaged aesthetics of his ‘Rakka’ albums further into the maelstrom with challenging results, even for the most ardent followers of his sound. If Merzbow loaded RP Boo’s sampler for a single session, it may sound a bit like this lot; a barrage of hyper, strobing structures, going very overeasy on the distortion, and with scant respite for anyone looking for a bit of easy fun. 

The twin inspirations of his native, inhospitable Finnish landscape, and isolation therein, are complicated by inspo from the brutalism, man-made world, prompting a wildly expressive batch of recordings that care not for your sanity. It starts out relatively sensual, in the “nice” sense, with a lush/bitter flux of dub chords cycled thru thistly filter chicanery in ‘Isovitutus’ and only proceeds to get more unhinged, with prevailing influence of Tanzanian singeli possibly detectable in the frenetic shape of ‘Isosusi’, and pushed to alarming degrees, quite literally with the blaring sirens of ‘Isonuha’. Moments of relative respite are lodged in the likes of his isolationist ambient asides on ‘iS’ and the rinsed out final touch of ‘Isopieni’, but that’s all you’re getting, as the rest of it sounds like a jerry-built machine coming apart at the screws, cogs whirring out of control and everything on the cusp of collapse.

Exhilarating and/or eviscerating, you decide.

Good luck to him but have not liked the direction he has gone in since Rakka.

  On 7/17/2022 at 9:31 PM, Richie Sombrero said:

Good luck to him but have not liked the direction he has gone in since Rakka.

same. a bit too harsh for my taste

yeah i’m a huge fan but can’t say i have an enjoyable time with his new stuff. doesn’t really warrant much repeat listening. it’s cool though he can mix it up. 

This album sounds like trying to torrent hip hop from the future but the transfer is getting corrupted because the planet on the other end just got destroyed.

I also prefer his calmer, space-y material, but I do appreciate how uncompromising his stuff is. What genre would you call this, just out of curiosity? It can no longer lumped into the dub techno stuff. 

A nice recent interview here: 

Another new album. He's on a roll.
https://vladislavdelay.bandcamp.com/album/singles

It's close to noise music really. Too harsh to be ambient. 

I still like his jazzy/dub collabs but not these harsh soundscapes.

This album is fantastic. Only really knew demo(n)s and tummaa before. This guy really does his own thing doesn't he!

Was trying to think what this recent era of his output reminded me of and this morning it finally came to me:

(just this track, not the whole album)