Vladislav Delay interview

He gets back to me via email from his remote, northern location.

You recently played in Berghain (album release gig in Raster Noton 15th birthday party), was it good? Was it what you expected?

Yes and no. I really like the place, I think it's one of the best places as far as clubs go. Almost like an institution.

Even though the event was somewhat different from a typical night there, it was still counterproductive to play a Vladislav Delay live set at 5am. It's a challenge to say the least. Lots of people who would have liked to hear my set had to go home already, and then again, lots of people who stay there until late are there to dance and looking for a solid delivery, even on a night like Raster-Noton one.

So it was pushing me to play in a way I don't like; it pushed me to go to limit within my scale, a certain pressure that comes from almost frustration or inability to fit in, to be honest. It's not allowing me to do what I'd like to do, I have to reduce dynamics and variety of stuff I'd like to play, and instead try to keep the musical pressure level loud enough so I don't at least hear people talking which would happen on more ambient moments.

But still, it's the best there is in a way. I should have played much earlier, as many people seemed to agree.

New Luomo album was out on Moodmusic and new Vladislav Delay is out on Raster Norton, is Huume buried for now?

Huume has been buried since many years already. I stopped it right after Luomo "Convivial", when I moved to Finland.
Everything put together, it made absolutely no sense to keep doing the label from a remote place like where I live now, and also many partners, distributors etc had collapsed and I didn't want to spend lots of my energy finding new set-up to sell few records you still can. So I had to start looking for labels interested in working with me.

Before you've mentioned that you're not a club head, not inspired by any of the club oriented music, nor fond of the whole scene at all. What is it then, that fascinates you about it? You do produce, excellent and unique sounding club music.

I like the idea of the club, of techno music, all that. But mostly only in theory. In practice most of it falls too cheap on me.

I like the creative thinking behind it, and the ideas and visions it gives me, but how it's executed today in this über-commercial and very homogenous way totally kills me. I don't find myself there happy or inspired, on the contrary I find myself unhappy and just stunned by the lack of ideas and freedom.

There were moments in the late 90s, beginning of 2000s when there was really nice stuff coming out for a moment, before the Resident Advisor kind of electronic music dominance started, before electronic music became fashionable in the US. Labels like Chain Reaction, Richie Hawtin's Concept series, Mike Ink/Studio1, Brinkmann, all this stuff I thought were really showing some light there which I though was very interesting.

Besides Ableton live and everyone wanting to make music that sounds the same as the next guy's, I don't know what happened and why it all died and became this homogenous pool of marketable music but I find it very depressing. It's depressing because I seem to not understand the process while most of the planet seems to enjoy the current "club" developments. And I don't particularly enjoy this position.

That's why i feel so much disconnected from that scene and the music in general.

Kind of Blue, your first release from 1997, can you tell us little bit how it came to be?

It was done when I didn't know yet any of the electronic music, haven't heard any of that kind of music from Germany or US.

I had just made a switch from playing drums and percussion and doing some experiments with electronic sampling with percussion stuff and playing with few bands in my home town Oulu, realizing the interest I had in making music I wanted to do, not just copy other music.

At some point I became so frustrated with my ideas of playing jazz drums for a living that I sold my percussion and drums, and bought a small MIDI set-up to investigate the idea of doing music without a band, alone with electronic equipment.

I didn't think of doing electronic music though, I wanted to go somewhere with my jazz roots and ideas about it, and just to make music I thought spoke to me. I came up with material fairly easily after some learning period and eventually had enough good material that I wanted to do something with.

Jori Julkkonen used to live in Oulu, and he had gotten some success with his music, and I heard about him, met him few times and asked quite a few questions and found out about the independent set-ups around in Finland and hooked up with Marko Laine who had a distribution set-up. I don't know how I managed but somehow with a C-cassette master I managed to press a vinyl in Czech back then. And Marko got the record out there to Hardwax etc and so I became part of electronic music genre and started realizing there was a whole world of music I had no idea about.

Until then my electronic music knowledge was something like Prodigy or some cheap German commercial techno which I really couldn't deal with at all.

Kind of Blue was recorded in Oulu, Finland. Now, 14 years later, you live there again and are doing new Delay stuff. I see a sort of a "circle closing" finality in it, i.e. do you dig inspiration from your surroundings?

There are smaller and bigger circles and some are closing, yes.

I live near Oulu now, but it's like a night and a day difference. I live on an island which is off the mainland near Oulu.

But still it's close enough to say I'm back where I started from, albeit I couldn't ever imagine living in Oulu, or any other big or small city for now.
I get my inspiration from all around, not so much where I live actually but from travels and people I meet, books I read, news I read, food I eat, etc etc.
But the surrounding I have now allows me to process that inspiration and actually create something based on it.
I had quite a lot of trouble doing that in Berlin.

How was Berlin for you? Did you enjoy your time here or was your departure bitter?

I liked it for a while. But also it became clear I wouldn't want to live there anymore after a while and the last years I was kind of waiting to leave, I just hadn't figured it out yet where to. We spent lots of time with my partner thinking where to go, and only after our daughter was born it became clear we wanted to go to Finland.

What shocked me about Berlin is how much it changed within those 7 years I lived there. And of course it had already started to change radically even before I moved there.
But in the end it has become a top-10 mainstream place, which I can't relate to really. I don't eat McDonalds, I don't go to LadyGaga concerts, I don't watch primetime TV or read Sun newspaper. Which majority of people do, and I started to feel I live in a city like that. Just too much of this hype and everyone wanting to go there, interviews that are more about Berlin than music I make. It's just my nature which don't relate to this way of living and existence.

And I understand very well how the city is a gold mine for millions of people. And I actually like the city a lot still, I just wouldn't like to live there anymore. And i'm hoping this EasyJet techno tourism would ease up a bit. Right now it's quite disturbing to visit the city, or play shows there. Unless you go very far away from the centers you end up feeling like you're in a Disneyland which is not my preferred surrounding. Of course you can find tons of great stuff there even today, it's just that i'm quite sensitive to these external factors which I mentioned, and they can be quite a fun-killer actually.

Looking the dates on your website, you must be traveling quit a bit (especially now that you live in the deep north), you like it or see it purely as work?

I actually try to travel less all the time. That was one conscious part of moving up north.

But I still have to travel partly for my living, and also to stay connected socially to my music making.

It's dangerous if you end up alone in the woods and make your music by yourself, for yourself, and lack a real-life response and reality-check of what you're doing.

So I really have to go out every now and then to play shows, that's the only time I really know how I feel about what I have done musically, I don't mean I go and see if hands go up in the air, they never do in my music, but it's just a feeling I have inside me, if I stand behind my music, that's only truly possible when I'm front of people, naked so to speak.

I have realized though, that I don't want to have the pressure of having to play regularly shows to support my living, so I'm trying to find alternative ways to make a living with my music and having the shows purely as a way to support and better my music. I'm still far away from that though.

Can you mention some new Jazz acts that inspire you?

Not really. Maybe only thing that really stuck with me were the Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" and "Beyond the Sound Barrier" recordings, and even they are already quite old. But they had something that really appealed to me. But in general I'm listening to mainly old music from the 60s and early 70s. I do check new stuff when I can, and sometimes I enjoy for example Keith Jarrett trio for what it is or some contemporary stuff by Branford Marsalis for example that I listen so to stay informed about what's going on, but I must admit I'm not following the new generation of jazz musicians so much.

Some Delay fans may think that Luomo is too cheesy and pop. Do you agree that there are no such thing as "cheesy", or there is but both sides are important to maintain the equilibrium?

Of course this happens. I don't think too many people who like my Delay stuff like Luomo, and the other way around as well.

I don't see Luomo as cheesy, but as pop. Then again, it's always a thin line between them.

To me, still, cheesy implies not pushing the boundaries but playing with the obvious in obvious ways, and I'm at least trying not to do that.
Luomo is inspired by lots of old and current pop, RnB and such music, where (unfortunately) there's lots of cheesy stuff going on, and part of me also likes to listen to that stuff every now and then, like a sweet dessert or whatever.

But for me to make music, I have trouble when my production and songs become too much in that direction. And actually I think Luomo songs have become less "cheesy" along the years. Listening to Vocalcity or Present Lover songs now, I think they are very cheesy, and I couldn't imagine doing them again today.

Doing a mixtape, is that any interest to you?

No. I'm not a DJ so doing a mixtape would be for me to present all kinds of music together that I like. Few times I did that just for fun, but the fun ended when those websites who put up "serious mixtapes" wouldn't even play them.

Mixtures are definitely a social thing for me, not something I would do by myself, for myself.

Is it important for you to release twelve inchers?

It never has been so much of importance to me. I actually have trouble with them unless they are really done properly, many of them are done sub-standard and sound not as good as the masters in the studio. And also vinyl, if you want to hear it properly, needs quite a bit of investment in the equipment which I never could justify myself.

Typical Technics DJ deck doesn't really tell you much about the sound there was in the beginning, or potentially is still there on the vinyl.

I like the format very much, anyway. But again, more in theory than in practice. as i'm not a DJ myself it's not so much something I connect with.
I have a collection of old jazz and dub vinyls that I like a lot. But I find myself not listening to them so much these days, only as an extra pleasure when I take time off, something like that. But that's already miles away from 12s.

How about cover art, how do you choose it usually?

In the past with my own label I used to be 100% involved in it, working with designers and often participating in the design actively. Now working with other labels I don't try to push my agenda too much. Last few record, Quartet and Vantaa, I didn't do much more than say my opinions and choose the most fitting idea. Luomo Plus I did myself with a designer.

Which project are you going to concentrate next?

I will focus more on the Vladislav Delay project, see where it takes me.

If you could make up a drug from scratch and you could apply any effect on it, only limited by human imagination, what the effect would be?

Better the drug is, more problem I would have with it so I will pass this one…

What is your favorite wash cycle in your washing machine?

I hate washing machines… It's one of the only household thing I don't do.