Uusitalo – Vapaa Muurari Live

a badass set million light years ahead of anything I can think of. and to think it was constructed live... what pair of keen ears do you have to possess? damn Vlad. you had my curiosity, then you got my attention, now you have my deepest respect.

This never fails to enthrall me. Listen with good headphones and let your brain rummage around the flotsam, these tracks wash back and forth like an uneasy yet reassuring tide. "Social Children" samples Nicole Kidman's naval officer confession from Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."

This album takes source material from the 'Entain' LP and builds upon that in a bizarrely paradoxical manner.

How?

This album is deconstructionist techno, with a focus on rhythm and texture that has not been matched by anything this listener has heard since; (no, not even Uusitalo's subsequent, more simplified releases). With its brilliant focus on textural qualities and shuddering, almost humani-form noise collisions tastefully blended somewhere between the fore and the background, this album has the best parts of both complexity and simplicity while occupying neither realm.

A strong beat-driven, dub-ridden quasi-techno opens the album - but this soon subsides (not that it out-stays it welcome). The warmer, filtering and dub-bass elements coalesce like a gradual high-tide, and it is not long before we are soaked in the three/four track middle section of the album. Tentatively teasing the listener of what 'might' be, the tracks hesitate to take form. But take form they do, with a crescendo of cohesion and logic that is stunning even to this day. It truly is beautiful; moody without trickery, warm without deliberation, and fragility while avoiding clinical.

This album has more in common with 'Vocalcity' than it does with 'Anima' - we hear familiar elements from that album; the artist riffing with them as if newly discovered. The direction we're taken is further down the industrial, chamber-delayed, low-pass filtered and chattering subconscious (or unconscious?) of Luomo. This is somewhere we had never been before, and we haven't been since. Maybe the gate was only open for a short time, but we're at least very lucky to have been taken for this LP length tour.

For Delay and Luomo fans alike, this album is where they can meet halfway. And by halfway, I mean smack bang in the middle. The first two movements represent passages familiar to each party, if but presented in different ways. "Notke2" is a jazzed up "Notke", and "Terra" plays out as a softer version of "She-Center". "Serti" takes you on a thrilling ride, while "Lunni" has chilling beauty. All in all, "Vapaa Muurari" takes you on an emotional journey quite unlike any other album - one that you will want to take again, and again, and again.

This album of Delay's (here going by alias Uusitalo) is a reinterpretation of previous work, in a "live" format. One of the interesting things about this album is that it's not just a set of remixes, but music that is a refreshing and yet logical outgrowth of his work to date.The pieces themselves carry recognizeable passages from his previous compositions, though the album as a whole ebbs and flows in and out of new ideas and older textures, constructing a kind of unfolded imaginary narrative. Tones and textures meld into rhythms, and back, but with a consistent dream-like sensibility. The rhythmic structures of Vapaa Muurari/Live certainly make this one of Delay's more accessible works, but no problem: it's nice to see the versatility of Delay's ideas. Fantastic.

I have to say I didn't like this one. Dunno what is was...maybe something missing, perhaps the tracks were too alike...millions of ways to dislike things, BUT(notice the big but, folks!)there was one tracks that was, and is, truly a stupendous masterpiece.

"Social Selection"

"Social Selection" rolls everything that downtempo/minimal/dub songs should be like. It is airy, simple and yet surprising, and with a hook. The industrial samples on the background give this song such an indescribable lift, and take you higher than ever!

This CD is worth listening just for this track alone. Get the song if u can!