(02.11.07) Sasu Ripatti makes pushing boundaries sound so simple. Always has, going back to his earliest work under his first nom-de-guerre Vladislav Delay, and later under the guise of Luomo. The Delay material, best described as glacial dubscapes, expanded the boundaries of epic techno beyond the ten-minute barrier to the limits of a compact disc. Keeping forward motion in mind, Delay tweaks his beats, expanding and contracting them seemingly at will, but always on time, most effectively on his later material, Anima and The Four Quarters. Under the Luomo guise, Ripatti literally blew the doors off of house music with Vocalcity, incorporating the clicks-n-cuts aesthetic which was so prevalent around the turn of the millennium into the soul of Chicago house. A revolution was born. Follow up The Present Lover took a 45-degree turn to Vocalcity by pushing vocals to the fore.
Paper Tigers, the latest from the Finnish master, cements Luomo’s place at the front of the house vanguard, refining his approach of combining glitch with the almighty pulsing beat. Johanna Iivanainen’s vocals soar in places, get dubbed out and cut up in others, but remain the unifying element of the entire album. The lyrics are completely banal, but like most of the genre, they are not meant to be particularly meaningful, and therefore get a pass. “Really Don’t Mind,” the single, is indicative of the album – sounding like Ripatti wrote a straight up house track and then tore it all the way down, rebuilding it with only the most compelling elements. Somehow it retains a house feel while also feeling strangely alien, disorienting. “Wanna Tell,” the second-half highlight, builds a driving rhythm slowly over its nearly eight minutes, only to hit an oil slick halfway through as the beats hang a right hand turn to the tempo and the melody chases after it. Iivanainen’s vocals can’t twist with it either and the facade of traditional house music that this album claims as its foundation is revealed to be a malevolent doppelganger. If this track is spun in a club, watch for some serious stumbling on the dancefloor. Hilarity will ensue.
Does this get played in clubs? I can imagine an idealized, adventurous DJ spinning tracks like these, but I don’t think that it is too common. Which is too bad. The Luomo catalogue should work wonders on the dancefloor, but it doesn’t have the easy, anthemic quality of most house blockbusters. This is a good thing. The best music challenges the times, encourages innovation in its wake. Ripatti did his share, the onus is on you.
Paper Tigers is out now on Huume. Buy it at Amazon.com.
