Vladislav Delay: Tummaa (CD, Leaf, September 2009)

In which Sasu Ripatti takes techno apart, puts it back together all wrong, and ends up with something weird and a bit wonderful. It's like someone is doing lego on acid, and instead of a car they have ended up with something weird and spidery and liable to fall apart at any moment, but somehow rather cool. It has technoish beats, and it has echoing dubby clanking noises. But they're not sequenced conventionally, and they're certainly not pinned to a linear 4:4 structure. There's also a lot of live instruments, both percussive and melodic. Most of the tracks top ten minutes, and there is a lot of apparent meandering — but there's also evidence of very careful manipulation and editing and this ensures that there's never a dull moment. Maybe it's actually the techno equivalent of Eric Morecambe's pianist: all the right beats, but not necessarily in the right order. Intriguing.


I bought this from Boomkat. They categorize it as Basic Channel / Dub Techno, though I'm not sure I agree.