Vladislav Delay makes music somewhere between Pole and Tetsu Inoue, two of my favorites.
Pole pioneered a type of minimalist techno, involving a lot of clicks and static from a broken Waldorf 4-pole filter, as I remember reading somewhere sometime. The sound is very stable and brilliant. At lower volume, it more or less disappears into the dark walls. Listening closely, I am enthralled by it.
Tetsu Inoue creates drunken robot music. His CDs are impossible to understand and can’t be listened to at high or low volume, without some sort of detachment. I have looked at waveform displays of his music in audio editing software. Normal music - and by normal I mean almost all - looks like a line of fish, each biting his neighbor’s tail. Tetsu Inoue sets a cat loose in the fishtank. It’s really quite awesome.
Vladislav Delay is normal music.
One thing I’m interested in is the process of mainstreaming fringe ideas. Look at how Wilco or Radiohead took a bunch of noises and weirdnesses and by placing them in the mainstream context of pretty songs declawed them. Those cats have stopped tipping fishtanks.
Whether Vladislav is an odder Pole or a wilcoed Inoue is really immaterial.
1 year ago
