The Four Quarters

Vladislav Delay continues to mine his much loved seam of dub fragranced minimalism, with a sound that seems to have really hit pay-dirt on new album ‘The Four Quarters’. Divided into four extended pieces, this full length has lightness of touch that genuinely defies belief; with Delay allowing the music to unfurl like an aural orchid in both the broadest of strokes and the finest of detail. Opening with (you guessed it brains!) ‘The First Quarter’, Delay initially shuffles into view through a gorgeously rousing blush of diffused atmospherics, onto which he slowly needles bubbling synths, star-bursts of fractured (but in no way imposing) vocals and a spectrum of beats that mine the tradition of his Basic Channel past perfectly. All that and we’re only four minutes in. Continuing in a similarly jaw-dropping style, Delay seems to have returned to the pinnacle of his Chain Reaction excursions, encouraging the listener to submerge ever further by offering half glimpsed aural edifices (some distant crowd noise here, a clutch of Arabic indebted instrumentation there) whilst always littering the foreground with enough pronounced intent to guarantee even the most casual listener will remain enraptured. Somehow massaging the best elements of people like Jan Jelinek with the deep soundscaping of Mark Nelson’s fabulous Pan American, ‘The Four Quarters’ is a record whose beauty and absolute depth really cannot be overstated. (Review by Totally Fuzzy Blog)

Pair of releases from the Finnish producer, one glacial and melodic, the other a bit too smooth jazz.