Vladislav Delay (aka Sasu Riaptti) is a Finnish, Hailuoto-based innovative and prolific electronic musician, experimental composer, and the owner of the Rajaton label, who has never fit into any preset mold as an artist. He was a jazz drummer, a notorious producer who has defined glitchy dub techno, and has played metal percussion with the producer and electronic musician Moritz Von Oswald Trio
Continuing Vladislav Delay’s genre-resisting output, his international, Berlin-based, supposedly acoustic jazz quintet does not fit into any specific category. Since 2020, this quintet of forward-thinking musicians – Danish trombonist Maria Bertel, Canadian bassist Derek Shirley, Argentine reed player Lucio Capece, German synth player and pianist, and Delay on electronics, production, and mix – has released exclusive pieces for Delay’s Bandcamp subscribers. vd5 is the quintet’s debut official album, recorded at Candy Bomber studio in Berlin, known for its vintage German and American studio equipment.
The ten untitled pieces suggest an adventurous, shape-shifting ensemble that acts left of any given timeline. This quintet asks what jazz is, or whether we can really define jazz. Is it sound? Aesthetics? Approach? Ambience? Noise? Rhythmic patterns? The answers that this quintet provides are tenstative, subversive, and ever-evolving, and that kind of exploratory, genre-defying approach makes vd5 so interesting.
The irreverent, cryptic, and often introspective and lyrical approach of the quintet keeps testing and experimenting with all parameters, forms, and inner logics of music – structure, rhythm, sound, and dynamics, refusing to subscribe to any method or school, and leaves the familiar jazz elements in the margins of its soundscapes. It acts like an experimental, futurist sonic.
Eyal Hareuveni
Maria Bertel (trombone), Lucio Capece (soprano saxophone, slide saxophones, khene), Derek Shirley (bass), Max Loderbauer (Haken continuum, piano), Vladislav Delay (electronics, production, mix)
