Finland's Vladislav Delay gets more mileage out of less sonic material than almost anyone working in electronic music today. In 2000 and 2001 alone under the aliases Uusitalo and Luomo, he's explored minimal techno and a t... more »horoughly idiosyncratic version of house music (respectively), and he has returned to his original moniker for the fourth full-length Vladislav Delay release. Unlike minimal techno artists like Thomas Brinkmann, whose metronomic beats are intended to recall (and are sometimes even created by) the precisely recurrent click of a horizontal scratch on a vinyl record, Anima travels out to the land where the beat is implied rather than stated. Not that there are no percussive sounds--aside from the continuous oscillation of two sustained keyboard chords and similarly circumscribed single-note melodies, the bulk of the sounds are scratches, whirrs, clicks, and buzzes that ebb and flow with the regularity of calm tidal water, but never outline the steady 1 through 4 of the dance floor. For just over an hour (bookended with some contrastingly tense conversational snippets), this is all that happens, and either most of the music is created by real-time knob twiddling or it is generated by unprecedented degrees of programmed randomness. But the upshot is remarkably varied and unrepetitive, in the sense of strictly audible sequences and loops. --Bob Bannister« less
Finland's Vladislav Delay gets more mileage out of less sonic material than almost anyone working in electronic music today. In 2000 and 2001 alone under the aliases Uusitalo and Luomo, he's explored minimal techno and a thoroughly idiosyncratic version of house music (respectively), and he has returned to his original moniker for the fourth full-length Vladislav Delay release. Unlike minimal techno artists like Thomas Brinkmann, whose metronomic beats are intended to recall (and are sometimes even created by) the precisely recurrent click of a horizontal scratch on a vinyl record, Anima travels out to the land where the beat is implied rather than stated. Not that there are no percussive sounds--aside from the continuous oscillation of two sustained keyboard chords and similarly circumscribed single-note melodies, the bulk of the sounds are scratches, whirrs, clicks, and buzzes that ebb and flow with the regularity of calm tidal water, but never outline the steady 1 through 4 of the dance floor. For just over an hour (bookended with some contrastingly tense conversational snippets), this is all that happens, and either most of the music is created by real-time knob twiddling or it is generated by unprecedented degrees of programmed randomness. But the upshot is remarkably varied and unrepetitive, in the sense of strictly audible sequences and loops. --Bob Bannister
CD Reviews
Delay is good, this album is not his best, okay?
donkeye | all up in your face | 10/25/2001
(3 out of 5 stars)
"It's a strange and often dastardly subculture that lauds its artists as if they are prize-winning pups who can do no wrong.
To cut to the chase: If you're looking for an album to buy, and you want to try Mr Delay, then the better album is Mutila. There is more variety, better pacing, and less of the overly flowery gestures. Anima is a lush, mostly beatless beast, and showcases a wishy-washyness that does not make for satisfying repeated listens.More detail:Vladislav Delay has made much ambient music with varied success and varied names. Through the Clicks&Cuts cd volumes his name has gathered momentum and so have his releases. This one, which came out with this fantastic cover, did him well, but unfortunately it is not so good.
The cover is really good though, isn't it? Makes you want to buy it instead of Mutila, but that would be a mistake.**Entain, which you can buy with this album, is too similar. The better match is with Mutila.
Mutila is the better album, this is what I'm trying to desperately to say here."
A successful coda to his 2000 releases
Richard Diaz | 04/30/2001
(3 out of 5 stars)
"This Finnish producer cranks out albums about as frequently as anyone in recent memory, four in the past year alone. He's also the rare talent that can back up the output with critically lauded performances. Under his Delay name, "Entain" explored the fractured dub aesthetic, the Luomo alias put out the house gem "Vocalcity," a live-ish laptop-techno album as Uusitalo, and now Anima.Anima weaves a combination of his various guises, a sixty minute experiment of sonic dub and his ever-present waves of drone. Recorded as one track, noises peak out corners and tickle the edge of hearing, all coated in echo and reverb effects. It's a hypnotic beatscape journey that challenges your attention, seemingly determined to hide content in the background. Delay's dogged determination to reinterpret territory he's mined before pays off as an artistic endeavor. Since it conceptually remixes his prior work, though, it serves more as coda to a successful 2000 than a piece that can stand beside Entain or Vocalcity."
Swoops, sweeps, a story(?), and generally great 2k1 music
Rodney Reid | San Francisco, CA United States | 04/25/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Ok, I bought the clicks n cuts vol 1 w/vadislav delay, and kept seeing him referenced again places.In listening to this cd, I forget that it's on most of the time --- at the beginning I realize it, and some parts in the middle, but overall the swoop/sweep/click/I don't know what to classify it classical music(?) part just blends into a hypnotic blah for me. Parts in the middle (it's one 62 min track) give it structure and storyline feel, but hypnotize until the end 2 minutes which contain more stressed sounding vocal clips with v.delay's swoop-housey minimalistic sound. There's no beat, only sweep/swoop on this cd. Saying all that though, I love it, and have listened to it at least 6 times in the last week. Very soothing."
"how'm i supposed to feel about that? see, that's what i do
starzero | chicago, il | 05/08/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"underpinning this whole exercise are synth washes. the basic track is dull new age pap. over that is what sounds like openings and endings to about a hundred songs, like he went through his catalog and snipped off the intros and outros to all his tracks and stuck them over the synth washes, one after the other. they were clearly good songs, and, extrapolating, one can sense the greatness of all the missing tracks.
that is, in part, why this release gets only 3 stars. i want to like it, i really do, but i constantly have this sense that it's constantly starting and ending, opening and closing, without ever being anything. anima is eight hours of music condensed to one by cutting out the songs. the box set that could be would astound even the most determined hater. alas, no such thing exists."
Vladislav Delay the album for finely tuned ears
chloe_webb | Boston, MA | 05/17/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"A DJ friend recommended this CD, Anima as well as any Vladislav Delay CD when I asked for ambient suggestions. I can't say he did me wrong, I have since listened to this CD quite a bit, it's a piece of work from beginning to end... as one of my first ambient purchases it is very much on the european wavelength. Smooth and seemless transitions, the artist creates a musical landscape which keeps your ears glued to it from beginning to end. Much could be said for the artist, who seems to have endless approaches to creating a the wall of sound. Homework, remains my favorite, if you can compare. I have them both plus everything from this mega talented artist."
Track Listings (2) - Disc #1