LUOMO - Convivial

Sasu Ripatti has an alias for every occasion. The best-known alter ego is that of Vladislav Delay, the name under which Ripatti began producing techno music in the late 90s. Then there's the obscure Uusitalo and the less-used Conoco and Sistol. Not to mention his collaborations with his wife Antye "AGF" Greie-Fuchs and with pianist Craig Armstrong (The Dolls). But the name that should earn the Finnish musician his greatest commercial success is surely Luomo: Ripatti's house mask, behind which he can show the more accessible, less experimental side of his music.

Anyone completely unfamiliar with Vladislav Delay's house alter ego should start with the dazzling 2000 debut "Focalcity", or with the excellent "The Present Lover" from 2003, where some of the Finnish musician's best pop instincts shine through. "Convivial" arrives two years after "Paper Tigers", and in some ways serves as its ideal follow-up. The album unfolds like a carnival of sounds, packed with illustrious guests: from Catherine "Cassy" Britton, who opens the festivities with the lean electro-soul reading of "Have You Ever", to the charismatic Apparat, perfectly at ease on the ballad "Love You All", poised between Radiohead and Telefon Tel Aviv; from a resurgent Robert Owens tackling his usual elegant, blues-tinged house ("Robert's Reason") to a surprising Jake Shears, on leave from Scissor Sisters, for whom Luomo has cooked up an electronic funk worthy of peak Prince.

No fewer than four of the nine tracks on the album feature the voice of trusted collaborator Johanna Iivanainen. It's on these tracks that Ripatti more freely reveals the experimental side of his music, building twisted grooves and rhythmic beds inlaid with a thousand colours. Freed from the overbearing presence of the guests on the first half of the record, Luomo takes over the stage and delivers two of the most seductive tracks on the whole album, "Slow Dying Places" and "Sleep Tonight", proving once again that if there were only one name to cite to represent techno of the last ten years, it would be Sasu Ripatti's.

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12/11/2008