Vladislav Delay, Tummaa

Finnish producer Vladislav Delay (Sasu Ripatti, aka Luomo and Uusitalo) has often discussed his youth as a jazz percussionist, but it's generally been hard to detect much trace of that background in his dubby, pop-infused ambient house and techno. So it was a welcome surprise when, in 2009, Ripatti plopped himself behind a drum kit for the first time in many years, as a member of the Moritz von Oswald Trio. Just a few months later, Vladislav Delay's Tummaa — his first album under the alias since 2007's Whistleblower — suggests that he hasn't gotten the instrument out of his system.

Much like the Moritz von Oswald Trio's Vertical Ascent, Tuummaa focuses its energies at the intersection between electronics and acoustic materials; again, Ripatti relies heavily on a kit made of exotic instruments, water bowls and other custom noisemakers. He's assisted by Argentina's Lucio Capece on reeds and arranger/composer Craig Armstrong on piano and Rhodes, but this is no traditional combo; Ripatti has folded the elements of their sessions together in such a way that it's all but impossible to untangle a single element. Instead, gurgling tones and brushed percussion swirl together into fluid, indistinct bodies of sound, only occasionally yielding to the identifying flash of a given instrument, like the glint on a fish as it catches the sunlight. Recorded in winter on an island in the north of Finland, where Ripatti has been overseeing the construction of a new home for his family, Tummaa owes its title to a Finnish word for "darkness," but the album actually comes across as one of Ripatti's most deeply colorful works. Rhythmically speaking, it's his freest yet: echoes of dub, techno and dubstep resonate in fragments of pulse that are eventually swallowed up into an overwhelming sense of drift, sheared free from any kind of human or mechanical timekeeping.