VLADISLAV DELAY - Vantaa

"Vantaa", that is to say Vladislav Delay's tenth act. Sasu opens up completely, head and heart. It immerses you entirely, holding your head underwater until you realize you can breathe without needing oxygen. And even if you were to resurface, you'd find yourself staring at a lunar landscape, lit by a pale yet dazzling light. Craters all around and the usual isolationism. A full hour spent probing the cold seabed, with the ice on the surface coming and going with the tides. And finding yourself with faint breath and blurred movements.

There's little to dispute about Delay's extraordinary sonic sensibility. And yet here, once again - the umpteenth time - Sasu makes it clear who's in charge, who holds the winning card. And as if that weren't enough, the coordinates shift once more. Yes, because "Vantaa" is quite different from its predecessor "Tummaa". Sasu returns, in a sense, to the origins of his trademark sound, but without the coldness that once defined it. The influence inherited from "Whistleblower" is felt, and the avant- tightrope acts pay the price. It seems Delay wanted to recover a much more physical relationship with sound, one that speaks of ambient and subtle dub, in a liquid movement that touches everything and soaks nothing.

Perhaps Delay was missing Finland. Seven years based in Berlin, and now the return with his wife - Agf - and daughter in tow. Hailuoto is the name of the small island of a thousand inhabitants where they now live. And all of this comes through in "Vantaa". "Luotasi" opens the dance: ambient comings and goings with irregular dub, the usual chronic impalpability, with mists that never stop swaying, while "Henki" grows more physical in structure, with a spine built around a subdued, floating dub.

Delay builds visual frames with impressive ease, processing the grain of the sound, smoothing it out and returning it pure. Listen to the landscapes of "Lipite" - perhaps the track where the influence of "Tummaa" is most audible - or the watery play of "Narri" to uncover the magma of oceanic volcanoes.

The synth traces faint, muted lines that ripple into a swarm of broken straight edges ("Vantaa"), before reaching the cacophonous ecstasy of "Lauma", a triumph - unlike anything else in his career - of sustained beat over looping grayish backdrops. The sensual dub-techno of "Levite" restores the candor, with the splendid closer "Kaivue" sealing it all.

Putting himself on the line through his various akas, under the moniker Delay, Ripatti always manages to give his best, to draw out that certain quid that makes his sound unique. There would be no need for many words to describe a totality made of sound, only the urge to stretch out and stay like that: submerged without ever running short of air. Nothing will ever have seemed so quiet and so limpid.

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06/11/2011