Vladislav Delay has an exceedingly beautiful recording studio

The Wire recently featured Sasu Ripatti / Vladislav Delay on their cover. I'd never heard of him, but his studio is phenomally hot, from the lovely minimal white racks full of analogue gear (a Cwejman S1, Moogs, Vermona, Sherman etc) to the Japanese-style low-level desk, to the... well, what is that on his desk on the cover? (Answers, courtesy of Joker, Anon and Aaron, are that the little screen is an RTW Vectorscope, the green knob is a Crane Song Avocet monitor controller, and the wood-sided knob box is an Ursa Major Space Station reverb.) Lots more to read about Sasu at Swim Industries and The Music of Sound.

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

The flat box is an Ursa Major Space station, but I have no idea what the little screen is for...my guess is that it's a spectrometer of some sort.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:00 pm

And a Crane Song Avocet in the desk.

http://www.cranesong.com/AVOCET.html

Did wonder what the screen was...

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:28 pm

Bah. I'm waiting to see the studioes of Boris Flange and Heinrich Ring Modulator.

# posted by

Dan : 1:13 am

thats an RTW Audio Vectorscope:

http://www.rtw.de/english/produkte/stereosichtgeraete.html

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:17 am

Great studio, and he looks like Rodders from OF&H.

# posted by

Daren : 2:09 am

AFAIK, the screen is from a piece of mastering gear used to verify the phase of material prior to being sent for vinyl cutting.

Can't remember what it's called.

The rest of it is in a rack somewhere in the studio.

Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda used one in a 'Cyclo' installation and performance in Dundee, Scotland a few years back.

# posted by

Unknown : 2:55 am

I only know him from the one track on the highly recommended Intelligent Toys 4 from sutemos.net

http://www.sutemos.net/en/player;gid,20

Thought it might be one of the weaker tracks on that compilation.

Very nice intro to Baltic, Scandinavian, Russian Downtempo glitch.

# posted by

Unknown : 4:44 am

He's one of my all time favorite electronic artists.
As Vladislav Delay - Multila. Anima is ok.
As Uusitalo - Tulenkantaja.
As Luomo - Vocalcity.
I recommend all of the above if you like electronic music. It never bores me. That's a good article too.

# posted by

udenjoe : 8:32 am

some reviewer once remarked, that saying that uusitalo - vapaa muurari live is "techno" is like saying that miles davis is "jazz". i think that fits my view of the album quite well, if it isn't a masterpiece it's pretty damn close to that.

vocal city is absolutely amazing too - the later luomo stuff doesn't do it for me but that one rocks.

# posted by

kobra : 10:08 am

well, in this case I must admit the expensive and exotic gear is totally justified 'cos this man has made very good albums (vocalcity, for instance)
now I'd like to see Isolee's studio. anyone's got a clue what he uses?

# posted by

rai : 3:19 pm

you totally have to check out
uusitalo - vapaa muurari live

# posted by

kokoon : 9:45 am

how can you keep a studio so clean ? i will never manage to get such a clean desk ? not even a picture of vangelis on the wall ?

# posted by

f-mass : 1:49 pm

He's one of my favorite musicians and very inspiring. Nice to see his studio.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:14 pm

You've never heard of Vladislav Delay? You never heard Stockhausen's work until he died....

What makes you think you are qualified to run an electronic music blog, MR. MUSIC THING?!

kidding of course, but seriously, where you livin'?

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:57 pm

huh, never heard of Vladislav Delay? that's bad street cred :(

anyways, rest of the gear are:

RE-201, Manley Slam, Manley Vari-Mu, Manley Massive Passive, Cranesong HEDD, couple Weiss units. There is a Vermona spring reverb next to space echo and also a boss delay/reverb pedal (rv-3 or 5). Moogerfoogers can be seen in the background with eventide evenet remote. There is also more moogs, vermo na drm1, se omega 8, and some modular synth and step seq.

Vocalcity is an awesome record.

-t

# posted by

Unknown : 11:26 am

i'm guessing he picked up most of this equipment after the success of his earlier albums.
it's a shame i don't find much of his newer work that interesting.
less is more...

# posted by

cebec : 2:03 pm

BTW The step sequencer seen in the other shots is the legendary SND SAM-16, a piece of gear that figures very prominently in the work from most of the best e-music artists that came of age in the '90s, Sasu included. Getting the chance to use a SAM gives a new insight into where all those "supertracks" came from.

http://www.s-n-d.com

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:15 pm

eah, when he recorded Vocalcity and Present Lover (my fav record of all time) as Luomo he wasn't using nearly as much stuff. I actually read many of interviews with him where he shunned gear talk altogether. I think he used an old beat version of Logic on a G4 along with an MPC, a ouple real nice mics and some effects to get his sound.

Now he's just like every other gear head and his Vladislav Delay records still sound like someone falling down the stairs in the dark...

Nice low profile table though.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:08 am

There's a bigger picture on wire's own home page.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/288/

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:09 am

hmm, the CCCP shirt is the epitome of cool.

# posted by

ortho : 2:25 pm

I believe there Thinner released a Vladislov Delay record a couple years ago. All their releases are free at thinnerism.com

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:25 am

I bought some of his CDs. I wish I hadn't. Gives twaddle a bad name.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:57 am

great studio but really didnt like the last album ,
cheesy(in a bad way) and very brittle sounding a bit electroclashie, terrible vocals ):
..who needs that in 2008..

surprised he got a cover story with such a poor album compared to his previous work...
chelsea

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:43 pm