vladislav delay: rakka

On his adventurous first new album in five years, Vladislay Delay renders an extreme ecology of electronic sound inspired by time spent above the arctic circle, surrounded by tundra and the raw force of nature and visually given life by Ripatti's wife, Antye Greie-Ripatti, aka AGF. Although it features no location recordings, Rakka clearly imparts its theme thru a riveting palette of weathered textures, unyielding rhythms and the kind of reverberating, widescreen sound design that's defined his catalog of cult, contemporary music since the late '90s. While Vladislav been notably absent from release schedules in recent years -- aside from working on the soundtrack to The Revenant (2015) recording with Sly & Robbie in 2018 -- this new album is surely a bracing reminder of his knack for creating utterly immersive environments at the poles of ambient, dub, and noise. Inspired by the struggle to survive in unforgiving conditions, the music patently resembles a number of styles associated with music from northerly latitudes. Elemental traces of Scandinavian black metal, Pan Sonic or Deathprod-like power electronics and Thomas Köner-esque ambient isolationism are all detectable in the album's brutal panoramas, and evidently speak to a shared conception of the extreme Arctic's uncontrolled and uncorrupted wilds, and their frighteningly magnetic sort of push/pull on the senses. Titled in Vladislav's typically alliterative style, the tracks cascade in aggressive iterations of gravel-swilled rhythm and tonal attrition. The barely-harnessed might of opener, "Rakka" triggers a chain reaction on events that follows into a sort of blast-beaten ambience in "Raajat", and what sounds like throttled blvck metvl vocals meshed with flashcore in "Rakkine", whilst "Rampa" hammers home a martial noise techno tattoo, and the final couplet take this sound to its logical end-of-earth degrees with breathtaking form. Rakka is certain to both reaffirm and upend what listeners know and love about Vladislav Delay, while firmly galvanizing his sound for an unsure future. Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Artwork by LCR.