Vladislav Delay

Of all the turn-of-the-century glitch dub-ists out there, we can safely say that Finland's Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay, Luomo, Uusitalo) has had the hardest time outrunning the shadow of past achievements. That's because very few producers from that era hit the heights Delay managed between 1999 and 2001, a three-year span that saw him deliver vaunted long-player classics such as Entain, Mutila and Anima as Vladsilav Delay, not to mention Vocalcity as Luomo. But 2007's Whistleblower was considered by some a return to form, and this year's Moritz Von Oswald Trio collaboration, Vertical Ascent, hinted further that Ripatti had found his footing again by returning to his roots in jazz percussion. Tummaa confirms that return; it is easily his best Delay work since 2001's Anima. Here, he drops most of the laptop software that had grown stifling to his experimentation and delivers a mostly organic album that at times, sounds like the ghostly dub of an Eric Dolphy session. It's genuinely exciting to see a producer with such a storied history come back this way, not by reclaiming the sounds of his younger self but by maturing fully into a more experienced artist that no longer looks over his shoulder at past achievements but chooses to work purely on his terms.