[Moodmusic]

What does it mean that one of the best house albums of all time is the creation of someone who doesn’t think very much of it? While many (including yours truly) hold the six tracks contained on Luomo’s early masterpiece Vocalcity to be one of the touchstones of modern house music, Sasu Ripatti doesn’t really see what all the fuss is about. Which is fine: often artists see their work in a very different light from their fans, and it’s only fitting that Ripatti would see more recent Luomo albums as the superior ones, seeing as he wants the project to progress and only he really knows what that progression entails. Plus is the snapshot of where the Luomo project stands right now: simultaneously more pop and more experimental than his previous work.

“Twist” opens up with an almost nagging synth line soon joined by vocals that might suggest one Luomo’s poppier transmissions, if it weren’t for the extended runtime and slowly churning vortex of melodies and filter cutoffs. “Good Stuff” is much more pop, but not quite as good: it’s the longest track on the album and ends up losing a bit of steam. “How You Look” is a definite album highlight, sounding like a Trax-era Chicago drum track through Ripatti’s peculiar lens, while “Make My Day” and “Happy Strong” stomp along with confidence. The second half of the album is much shorter in terms of running time, with fuller vocal treatments and more immediate thrills. “Medley Through” could have appeared on Underground Quality given its deeper instrumentation and almost acid bass line, while “Form In Void” and “Immaculate Motive” are strong vocal-led pop songs. The best, however, is saved for last, in the very fine “Spy” — as unabashedly catchy as Luomo has ever been and all the better for it.

I suppose what all this means is that Luomo has not sounded quite so house in a very long time (yes, even after doing a track with Robert Owens). What I hear on Plus, and what I found missing from recent Luomo efforts, is a sense of groove that elevates things from dance music on an intellectual level to dance music on a physical one. As someone who didn’t love The Present Lover (how could I be angry with the recent batch of uninspired “Tessio” remixes when Ripatti himself was so capable of the same thing?), and who has seen plenty of likable-if-not-loveable Luomo material since, I think it’s easy to say that Plus is the best Luomo album since the venerable Vocalcity — even if that kind of comparison might not mean to much to Ripatti.

[Honest Jon's Records]

There’s a tension in techno between experimentalism and immediacy. How does a producer simultaneously catapult us into the future and keep us pinned to a dance floor that is very much in the present? The simple solution is to give voice within the music to both of these drives: maybe add a great hook to an abstract jam, or let a familiar framework shape otherwise strange sounds. As much as we chin-scratchers like to play up this music’s avant-garde tendencies (it certainly helps assuage our non-techno friends who assume we don parachute pants and pacifier necklaces every Saturday night), a certain amount of directness and engagement is a critical ingredient in good techno; likewise, without headiness, the stuff becomes gratingly mindless.

But what if the experimental and the immediate were one in the same? Could those very elements which catapult Side A to the top of the Juno charts also land its creator on the cover of The Wire? Moritz von Oswald, who has spent his entire career immersing us in this techno duality, has proved a case in point. With Mark Ernestus, he gave us Basic Channel and Maurizio, instances of stringent, gallery-ready minimalism that also happened to be some of the nineties’ most reliable sources for floor-fillers. They approached this duality from the opposite direction with Main Street Records and Rhythm & Sound, recontextualizing house and dub in explicitly intellectual terms (without letting the projects wade too far into the academic). How you view their music — art project or warehouse project — depends on where you hear it and how you listen to it, not on which aspect of the sonics are inherently clubby or heady. Since hooks and experiments both lose their niftiness over time, perhaps it’s the ambiguity of Ernestus and von Oswald’s stance that keeps their music relevant nearly 20 years after we first heard it.

While the Moritz Von Oswald Trio, his main gig since 2009, is effectively post-techno, the group continues to toe the line between high art and down-and-dirty functionalism. Their first album, the classic Vertical Ascent, explored this divide as delicately as would be expected of three techno auteurs (Max Loderbauer and Sasu Ripatti, two old hands with similarly ambiguous takes on electronic music, round out the Trio): through crafty dub-indebted engineering, von Oswald squeezed four imminently listenable and potentially club-friendly compositions out of extended studio improvisations. Things got a bit weirder on Live In New York, wherein the group riffed on their more focused album cuts and in the process made us wonder how we ever thought we’d get away with playing “Pattern 1″ at peak time. Horizontal Structures, the trio’s latest, completes this turn toward the strange, ironically making it a less exciting entry in von Oswald’s discography than it could have been. This isn’t to say that Horizontal Structures isn’t an excellent album; it’s just less versatile, and thus markedly less transcendent, than their last.

The album, this time a collection of “Structures,” finds the Trio in the same tropical climes as Vertical Ascent, perhaps on an even more discombobulatingly humid afternoon. As “Structure 1″ chugs into existence, a new addition to the Trio’s sound, Paul St. Hilaire’s dreamy guitar noodling, cuts ever so softly through the haze. Best known as Tikiman, St. Hilaire is no guitar wizard, but his playing lends a welcome human touch to the trio’s somewhat more processed sound on this record. The same goes for Marc Muellbauer’s contribution of double bass, which keeps the sprawling “Structure 2″ pinned to the earth. For two tracks with very different approaches to rhythm, the album’s first two sides feel strangely close to one another in mood and in style: when I listen, I find myself not so much getting lost inside of the tracks as I do losing track of the entrance amidst the drone. With more prickly beats, “Structure 3″ quickly snaps you out of your siesta, although I don’t imagine its peculiar swells and vaporous melody will summon you out of your beach recliner. You will, however, be in the right mindset for “Structure 4,” a surprisingly swift 20 minutes of Ripatti’s excellently subtle percussion and Muellbauer’s bass riffage.

As the album reaches its close, you may find yourself struggling to elucidate what you’ve just experienced, which is perhaps the greatest difference between this record and the one that preceded it. Where Vertical Ascent was made up of four discrete and easily approachable tracks, Horizontal Structures works most effectively as an entire set, one you may find a bit difficult to fully digest. Many of the familiar von Oswald touchstones are present — subtle electronics, general dubbiness — but rather than tiptoe down any stylistic lines, this record stands firmly to one side. And that’s the rub: with this record the Moritz Von Oswald Trio seem to have completely left ambiguity behind and stepped firmly into the realm of experimental music. It’s not a particularly bad place to be, and the members of the Trio are absolutely up to the challenge. Such sure footing just might not be the most interesting stance for them.

Sasu Ripatti is a familiar name in the dance music world although the monikers he’s appeared under have changed frequently. Recording variably as Vladislav Delay, Luomo, Uusitalo, and Sistol his back catalog similarly ranges from house to techno and ambient to jazz, all strung together by his attention to the tiniest of sonic details. In October, Halo Cyan will reissue his long out of print Sistol album, freshly remastered and paired with a disc of remixes, including this “refunk” care of New York City’s FaltyDL. Finding his voice in mutated 2-step and garage templates, FaltyDL twists the original’s nervy, stumbling thump into a limber percussion windstorm. A sturdy hi-hat leads the way while cymbals, woodblocks, toms, and processed field recordings get whipped together into a kinetic maelstrom. Including a healthy dose of subbass to rattle out the cobwebs, this track is a granual reworking of the quiet and painstaking original. A special thanks to Ripatti, FaltyDL and Halo Cyan for sharing this track.

Download: Sistol, “Kotka” (FaltyDL Refunk)

Since 2003, the Unsound Festival has been about bringing the disparate impulses inherent in electronic music under one roof — a music event urging you to scratch your chin one minute and dance your ass off the next. Presenting itself like a film festival but booked like a forward-thinking summertime weekender, Unsound has consistently showcased brilliant and challenging new sounds without ripping them from their underground trappings. Any music festival as likely to feature Sunn 0))) as Zomby is sure to pique my interest, but by nature of it happening in Krakow, Poland, its ridiculously open bookings stood quite a bit out of my reach. New York City — its population overeducated, overstimulated, and relatively accepting of high-end dance music thanks in no small part to Beyond Booking’s forward-thinking Bunker parties — always seemed like the perfect candidate for something like Unsound, and for a week in February 2010, my fair city got it. And not even a knock-off, either! The Unsound Festival New York brought a truly impressive and deliciously diverse line-up of electronic musicians — asking you to ponder, get down, or do both at once — to underground venues across Manhattan and Brooklyn. And I was lucky enough to trudge through New York’s famous February weather to witness the festival on Little White Earbuds’ behalf. (Very big ups are due to Gamall Awad of Backspin Promotions for making this possible.)

Before you commence living vicariously through me or skewering my apparent snub of your favorite electronic music subgenre, please allow me to offer this disclaimer on my coverage. Like most New Yorkers, I have a day job that doesn’t stop for Ezekiel Honig. And one of the venues, Littlefield, in Brooklyn’s quasi-apocalyptic Gowanus district, would have been nigh-on-impossible to get home from in the wee hours of a “school night” for a dude who doesn’t own a car. (My sincerest apologies, Morgan Geist.) In the interest of staying sane enough and awake enough to fully appreciate the programming LWE’s readers (and, I must admit, your correspondent) would take the greatest interest in, I had to streamline Unsound’s programming somewhat to best suit our needs. If your musical interests and general stamina are anything like mine, my guess is you would have done the same.

A still from “Blowjob” by l_c_m_tt_

After my supremely special guest for the weekend, LWE editor-in-chief Steve Mizek, arrived from Chicago, my Unsound week began in earnest. We kicked off the festival on Friday, February 5, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, to watch Carl Craig and nsi. perform live soundtracks for Andy Warhol’s short films “Blowjob” and “Kiss.” I’d been hearing whispers throughout the day that Tobias Freund’s participation in the festival had been nixed, but Max Loderbauer could certainly have done much worse than snagging Sasu Ripatti to sit in for his visa complication-addled nsi. partner. I can’t imagine the duo had much prep time, but I found the seasoned improvisers’ impressionistic score for “Kiss” hitting plenty of the right notes. The piece, however, didn’t seem to have much to do with the sloppy black-and-white making-out happening right above Loderbauer’s and Ripatti’s heads; indeed, about halfway through the short film, Loderbauer closed the laptop the duo was using to monitor the film and proceeded to just jam on keyboards and effects units to their hearts’ content. C2, donning his finest mnml scarf and sipping daintily on red wine, was more in the business of soundtracking than the opening act. His score, filled with musical double-entendres befitting his tawdry material, wasn’t necessarily any better than what preceded it, but I found it on the whole more engaging. Steve and I had known for months we’d be seeing Loderbauer and Ripatti later that weekend at the Moritz Von Oswald Trio’s U.S. debut, but we’d been tipped off — by MVO himself, on LWE no less — that we’d be seeing Craig on stage once more that weekend as an honorary member of the Trio. The performance thus proved to be an auspicious beginning. But our night was hardly over.

After a dinner of artisanal tacos, Mexican Coke, and rampant dance music gossiping, Steve and I made our way to Public Assembly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for the first of three Unsound-affiliated Bunker parties. After head-nodding in the coat check line to Legowelt’s supremely nerdy live set, we made our way into the club’s dimly-lit back room, where Luke Hess was playing a tasty if same-y dub techno PA to a disconcertingly tiny group of dancers. The room began filling, though, as midnight — and the U.S. debut of Newworldaquarium –drew near. I don’t normally get too jazzed about live sets, as a dude standing in front of his laptop generally loses my interest pretty quickly, but NWAQ’s nearly two-hour performance was truly one of the most revelatory things I’ve ever witnessed in a club. Members of the now-packed dance floor were literally screaming in bliss as our protagonist dropped classic after classic — yes, he played a souped-up version of “Trespassers,” and yes, we all almost died — at an impossibly loud volume. (Once again, Beyond Booking, kudos on maintaining perhaps the best soundsystem for house and techno in town.) NWAQ gave us a masterclass in letting just a few perfectly funky sounds do a whole lot of work, and hearing some of his best works in succession really brought out their subtle brilliance. Too exhausted and too blasé about the line-up for the next three hours to hang around for Ripatti’s Uusitalo set (a very rare thing, and a tantalizing replacement for tobias.’s planned closing performancing), Steve and I and our ringing eardrums called it a night.

Saturday, February 6 paired another Warhol film with a new electronic soundtrack, this time one performed by musicians less associated with dance music and on a more epic scale. While Steve and I recovered, LWE correspondent Momo Araki ducked into (Le) Poisson Rouge in Manhattan and filed this report:

“Empire,” in Andy Warhol’s words, is a film to “see time go by” though twenty-four hours of continuous footage (compressed to eight screening hours) of the Empire State Building. It captures nonevents like blinking building lights to mark gradients of time. Though I was only able to catch about ninety minutes of Groupshow’s eight-hour accompaniment to the film, with about thirty to fifty people cycling in and out of the show at any moment, some staying briefly, others ostensibly for its entirety, I thought of their set also as a nonevent. To be clear, this is not a criticism. It felt right to enjoy the intimate basement performance in a casual manner with the metropolis buzzing routinely above. The performance seemed more about circulation than destination. You enter, tune in, chill out, leave, get a sandwich, come back, and go home, all at your leisure. The players did the same: Jan Jelinek would leave his seat, and with his synths hibernating, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler would strip down the sound to a rhythm section of drum pads and delayed electric guitar. When Jelinek returned, he’d drone things out, at which point Leichtmann would get up for a brief reprieve.  

Things might have been more formal and intense from the outset, or have intensified towards the culmination, but with ”Empire” as their reference point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Groupshow intended for, and executed, this casual pacing throughout the eight hours. To be clear, this wasn’t about the sensory overload achieved by Warhol and the Velvets. Groupshow would sketch up a jam for about ten to fifteen minutes, cut it loose into the ether, and begin anew, much like their latest album. Formerly known as the Kosmischer Pitch live band, Jelinek, Pekler and Leichtmann last came to New York to perform Jelinek’s material from the 2005 album of the same name. My friends reported it was like contemporized Krautrock; I didn’t catch any motorik beat this time, but the band was definitely on form and abundant with musical ideas. With so many reference points to their sound, describing it is an exercise in futility (for those curious, a simple Googling will help); nonetheless, finally catching them live left me excited about their next moves. With the Moritz von Oswald Trio to lay down later that night in a musical style none too dissimilar from Groupshow, Saturday ended up a truly rich day for improvised electronics.

–

Steve and I joined Momo at (Le) Poisson Rouge later that evening for the aforementioned Moritz Von Oswald Trio performance, the event we’d been anticipating more than any other at Unsound. (A quick word for the designer sweater-wearing bro working LPR’s coat check: if my hooded sweatshirt and pea coat are worn as one item and fit easily on one hanger, how can you sleep at night knowing you charged up the wazz for two items? I stuffed my hat in my coat pocket — why not just charge me for three? And promoters wonder why no one goes out in Manhattan anymore.) Apparently hundreds of others had been similarly set abuzz: after an opening performance of Ravel & Mussorgsky pieces (from which C2 and MVO crafted their 2008 Recomposed album) that honestly felt a bit distracting and patronizing — must electronic dance music be paired with classical music in order to take on an acceptable level of artistic seriousness? — the crowd waited anxiously for the stage to fill with the creators of last year’s instant classic Vertical Ascent.

(L-R) Moritz Von Oswald, Max Loderbauer, Carl Craig and Francois K. Photo by Dariowaty

When Ripatti, Loderbauer, and MVO finally took their places behind mountains of gear, they were joined by C2 and Francois Kevorkian, the latter of which lent the group his legendary mixing skills. At the end of their performance, C2 grabbed a microphone and declared this particular MVOT performance to be “the best set” they’ve ever performed, and it’s tough to imagine he’s wrong. While lacking the floor-readiness of some of Vertical Ascent‘s most memorable moments, the personnel extracted genuine charisma and humanity out of a stageful of machines. Analog bleeps soared over boiling washes of dub and churning electro-acoustic rhythms, serving up what Momo elegantly described in an email afterwards as “a lush synthesis of modern music from the last thirty years.” It was a supremely tough act to follow, and shit-hot New York producer Levon Vincent didn’t necessarily try with his closing DJ set. He just did what he’s best at — playing the nastiest, toughest house jams imaginable — and in the process coaxed a decent percentage of the crowd into a dance party. His set, encompassing plenty of deep, dirty cuts and such gems as Floating Points’ “Vacuum Boogie” and his own “Six Figures,” would have been the highlight of practically any other club night, and it left me and my friends with awesomely sore feet on Sunday. One epic weekend down, one editor back to Chicago, and one equally epic weekend to go.

While I’d had Wednesday’s experimental Silence and Noise showcase at LPR with Tim Hecker, Radian, and Mountains on my calendar, a sizeable blizzard kept me confined to my apartment. That left a program of electronic music documentaries on Monday, February 8, to hold down my weekday Unsound activities. My girlfriend recently gave me a copy of White Noise, the cult British electro-sleaze-pop record featuring BBC Radiophonic Workshop guru Delia Derbyshire, so I was thrilled to see the New York premiere of Kara Blake’s “The Delian Mode” and learn a bit more about this enigmatic tape machine manipulator. Both that film and the documentary that followed it, Mika Taanila’s “The Future Is Not What It Used To Be,” about crazed Finnish computer guru Erkki Kurenniemi, suffered from too much style and too little substance. The Derbyshire documentary in particular glossed over tangible biographical details — critical for giving audiences more than an insinuation of her importance to contemporary electronic music — in favor of making a kind of filmic homage to her method and aesthetic. (“The Alchemists of Sound,” a BBC documentary from 2003 available on YouTube, is more useful to anyone truly interested in her and her Radiophonic Workshop colleagues’ work.)

Friday, February 12 brought on the second Bunker party, perhaps the one I was most excited for. It seemed that others might be suffering from club night overload. As I waited outside for my +1, I watched more than a handful of potential attendees step up to the door, grimace at the $30 cover, and wander off to someplace cheaper. I was almost compelled to intervene, to grab these Friday night revelers by the shoulders and explain to them that the legendary Anthony “Shake” Shakir, the brilliant Mike Huckaby, and the exciting underdog DJ Qu would be playing, and that such a lineup just might be priceless, but I felt for these folks. With the exchange rate, these Unsound Bunkers were more expensive than a Saturday night at Fabric; it’d be a lot to pay for a standalone night, let alone a night in a week packed sardine-like with them. So it goes. I made it in for the last half-hour or so of hometown headfuck practitioner and ever-opinionated Internet personality Eric Cloutier’s opening set in the back room, and he mixed up just the sort of the painstakingly-curated smoothness for which he’s gaining international renown.

Next up was DJ Qu, an Underground Quality member I’ve somehow never seen play out before. He was absolutely brilliant, playing a set of un-trainspottable stoner-house that just got better and better with every track. It was only in the last twenty minutes or so that I could drag myself into the front room for the final moments of Mike Huckaby’s set. Huckaby’s mixing was a touch rough and his track selection somewhat scattered, but dancers seemed to be having a good time. The real gem of the night, if not the whole festival, was Shake. Opening with a sublime string of poppy, vocal-laden Detroit house tracks, Shake cast his adoring crowd in multicolor, a feat awesomely at odds with the Bunker’s signature low light. Obviously fatigued, the veteran flubbed some transitions and had to spend some time seated behind the booth as his set went on, but every single track he dropped was pure gold. And the guy’s still got plenty of tricks up his sleeve. At one point, Shake dropped two copies Cooly G’s “Narst Dub” on the decks and proceeded to extend the break and ingeniously cut up the beat structure for a number of minutes. He’d start one record a beat or two off and swap between both records with the cross-fader, creating a wild re-edit on the fly. I felt truly honored to witness this legend in action, especially when he busted out “Arise” — perhaps the most euphoric side on his Frictionalism retrospective — and damn near splattered our brains all over the walls.

2562. Photo by Kristopher Trolle

I went into Saturday, February 13, expecting to have to shift gears considerably. That night featured Unsound’s big finale, Bass Mutations, a version of the dubstep party brought over from the festival’s Krakow edition in collaboration with the Bunker. Given the power of Beyond’s soundsystem and the relatively grimy, low-key confines of Public Assembly, my expectations were running extraordinarily high. The Bass Mutations forum earlier that day, in which a smattering of the night’s performers opined on the state of bass music, had done much to excite me as well. I hadn’t been expecting straight-up Croydon bass wobble — almost all of the artists on the evening’ s bill are known for pushing the envelope — but I wasn’t expecting the DJ’s and producers on hand to nearly mutate the bass right out of their sound.

TRG, the Romanian producer best known for his work on Hessle Audio, hid his dubstep pedigree deep beneath layers of funky, tracky tech-house in his back room set. In the front room, Alka Rex’s Konque project played a live set that took an extended meander into mid-decade minimal. Untold, spinning at peak-time, brought a violent, hyperactive vibe that seemed to exist beyond genre conventions — truly brilliant music with plenty of bass, but it was almost too manic and intense for me to stomach for extended stretches. My girlfriend lived in London from summer 2008 to summer 2009 and heard plenty of dubstep, but she said that these sounds bore almost no resemblance to the ghostly sounds she’d expected based on her time there. Something tells me that’s exactly what these guys were going for. The night encapsulated a truly fascinating moment in this corner of dance music: the dubstep producers showcased are defining themselves by how far away they can get from dubstep. I can’t wait to see where they settle, should they deign to settle at all.

After two weekends packed with parties soundtracked by the vanguard of dance music, I’m more than a little wiped. But I’m also as excited by this music — and New York’s viability as a dance music town — as I’ve ever been. It’s possible many festival attendees experienced an entirely different Unsound than I did, one in which harsh electronic experimentation and heady panels dominated. At Unsound, festivalgoers must choose their battles to some extent — maybe not what the festival’s organizers, hellbent on crossing genres and listening experiences, had in mind, but a reality for anyone with a job and without a car. Whatever their intentions, the festival’s curators (Beyond Booking especially) happened to assemble a handful of the best club nights I’ve come across anywhere. Here’s hoping that Unsound decides to catch an international flight over from Krakow again next year.

Moritz Von Oswald is simultaneously one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in techno. As part of Basic Channel, Maurizio, Rhythm and Sound, and other configurations with Mark Ernestus and a revolving cast of musicians and vocalists, Von Oswald became one of Europe’s first techno innovators. Basic Channel defined dance minimalism early on, both through a love of repetition as a form of change, and a willingness to let the music speak for itself. More recently, Von Oswald has demonstrated that his reach extends far past the dub-inflected electronic soundscapes he helped introduce to dance music, with stunning remixes of not just Tony Allen, but also Ravel and Mussorgsky. Finally, last year’s Vertical Ascent matched Von Oswald with Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay, Luomo) and Max Loderbauer (nsi, Sun Electric) in an improvisational group, yielding a standout release of 2009 by any measure. LWE had the distinct privilege of speaking with Moritz Von Oswald in advance of his trio’s American debut at New York’s Unsound Festival. Like his music itself, Von Oswald’s approach to thinking about music is simple and direct. But like his music, depth and complexity are immediately apparent.

How did you get the idea to start an improvisational group, and how did you get connected with your collaborators Max Loderbauer and Sasu Ripatti?

I knew Sasu for a long time, because he did a record on one of our labels, Chain Reaction. So I’ve known him for 10 years or so. And I also knew that he’s interested in jamming, and I wanted to have a group that plays without any rehearsals, very simple. That just goes into recording without knowing each other too well. So very advanced improvisation was one of the key points. Making strong sounds and live playing, keeping it simple. As simple as I could. I’ve known Max for maybe 20 years, because when he came to Berlin we did a little collaboration on some — I wouldn’t say major stuff, but some small work. If you have a group with not too many members, you have to have trust in their facilities. And that’s what I had from those days. I knew that Sasu has a very great knowledge of sound and playing, and that’s exactly how it came out. With Max, I knew he has a very good sense of melody, and very, um — cute sounds, you know? This is what always attracted me to his productions. What he was doing was always very sweet-minded. And I liked that. If you listen to the record, you notice there’s a heavy dance rhythm. So Max breaks this up. It doesn’t affect the richness of the whole thing. It’s actually the opposite. It adds another layer to it.

A fully improvisational group in electronic music is pretty rare. Were there any groups, electronic or not, that you wanted to use as a model?

Not so much. I just wanted to have live playing, simple and spontaneous, with trust in the facilities of the other members, to develop a strong collaboration.

Have you done any projects like this in the past?

Not really, it’s the first time I tried this out. It came out because I worked in the studio for such a long time, which can sometimes be the opposite of this. Not so spontaneous. I like that, I like to focus on details. But I also like to just play! I mean, this is quite detailed. The record is very detailed in its sound picture. But it’s not overproduced.

The Moritz Von Oswald Trio in action. Photo by Rene Passet

How does the typical session proceed? Does everyone have a particular compositional role?

We get together and just play. We record from the first note.

So everything is new? Nothing is pre-written?

Nothing.

So how do you prevent things from going wrong, so to speak?

There is nothing wrong! I like the leftovers. I like when something is not precise, not just in “the right place.” I left everything we did and tried to work with it. Because nowadays you have all these precise records, and everything is in the right place because you can have access to it so much. I try to avoid this. And I think it worked, you know? With live playing, it’s a chance to try out stuff that you would never have imagined is possible.

So when people attend the Trio’s upcoming American debut performance in New York, are they going to hear something entirely different from the record?

Not entirely, but quite different. It will be improvised and very spontaneous.

What instruments will you use live? What’s your gear setup?

It’s just keyboards and percussion. We’ll also have a guest: Carl Craig from Detroit. Same thing — no rehearsal, just respect and trust.

Allow us to introduce ourselves: (left to right) Max Loderbauer, Moritz Von Oswald, Sasu Ripatti

You have another group with Carl Craig as well, along with Francesco Tristano, called Shape.

We formed last year.

What’s the approach to that? Is it a similar method?

Not really, because Francesco is a very well-trained pianist. It’s more like a club beat, very clubby. But also improvised, with some sax players and some different musicians. It’s quite different. We have a performance in London on the 12th of February. It’s gonna come out beautiful, I think.

It sounds like you’re moving in a lot of different directions with your current work, getting away from the conventional style of techno and approach to techno. Do you mostly listen to music outside of techno these days?

Yeah, I do. I listen to jazz, to classical, to experimental and avant-garde. A lot of dub as well. I just have fun with some sounds. Not too many concepts, just fun.

Will you continue producing club records?

Yeah! I’m doing remixes; these are going to come out as well. ReComposed is a very good example of how house can work with electronics from a different source. That’s why I like the record a lot. It broadens the mind, or at least I think it should.

It’s clear from your collaboration with the members of your group that you keep up with contemporary producers in dance music, in electronic music. Are there any other producers or DJs you’ve been listening to currently?

DJs, not so much. But I like what Carl is doing all the time. So we might work for together for some more projects. I don’t know, we’ll see.

Would you like to have more DJ gigs, playing techno?

Yeah, why not? No problem. I like club stuff.

Have you been doing much of that?

Not so much.

Did you get bored with it, or have you just been busy?

It’s just a question of having time. Time is short. That’s the main reason I don’t have so many releases for the club. But they will soon come.

Yeah? Do you have any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

I can’t tell.

Luomo. Vladislav Delay. Uusitalo. Whichever name he used, Sasu Ripatti has been pushing boundaries for his whole career. His legendary Multila album on Chain Reaction took dub techno to places it had never been before (and has never been since), while Anima on Mille Plateaux continues to astound eight years after its release. As Luomo he practically defined “micro-house” with Vocalcity, considered by many to be simply the finest house album of the decade, while Uusitalo is an outlet for his reduced techno excursions. Recently he has received praise as the all-important drummer for the Moritz von Oswald Trio, released Tummaa as Vladislav Delay and collaborated with partner AGF on Symptoms. We caught up recently with Sasu to chat about his history, his future and just what exactly those “drums” are on Vertical Ascent.

Tell me about your early musical history as a jazz drummer. Who were some of your influences and how exactly did you start producing electronic music?

I was really intensively into jazz and drumming and my plan was to become one of the greats. I was maybe 14 then. I spent all my time studying and playing drums, so much work and dedication it’s crazy when looking back. Anyway, at some point I realized all the visions I had about jazz were from 60′s and that it wouldn’t exist anymore these days. I realized it wouldn’t be possible to do what I wanted to do and basically gave up on drums and percussion. That lead to experiments on all fronts, drugs and new music, travels to Jamaica, etc. I got really lost for a moment, shocked from this realization I couldn’t do what I had so much wanted and planned.

Along the way I begun expanding from drums to experimental percussion, trying to look for new directions and challenges. Eventually I hooked up with electronic samplers and digital percussion controllers, which then led me to first look at synthesizers and sequencers, learning about possibilities to make music by myself with machines. I had tried producing and composing music with some bands but had found it impossible with so many people all going different directions. So given a chance to try out making my own music by myself I jumped at the chance, giving up all the rest. The only thing was, I didn’t know about any electronic music then except for some commercial stuff like Prodigy et al., which I thought was ridiculous. I was still trying to do some kind of jazz whatever stuff which actually was quite close to what they would call electronic or ambient music I’d learn later.

How did you hook up with the Chain Reaction guys?

Eventually I learned about what was going on in Germany and about interesting electronic music, and bought some vinyls and heard about Chain Reaction. And they were the most influential outlet I had heard and I really wanted to release stuff on their label. I sent a C-cassette to them and Mark called me one day saying they wanted to release my stuff.

How do you translate the extreme complexities of your Vladislav Delay work into a live performance?

Technically it’s not possible to do live sets as I do it in the studio but the principle is the same. I just throw in whatever available and force it to make some musical sense, to me at least. I believe a lot in random elements and not too much controlling them but rather letting them do their things. Basically in a live situation I don’t construct a track from small elements like in the studio but rather push bigger elements together to make new soundfields.

You sometimes reference your work under other monikers in your music, for example, Uusitalo’s “Notke2.” How do your various guises influence each other? Does something you learned or a technique used while making a Luomo track carry over to a Vladislav Delay track, for example?

In the beginning when I was still trying to figure out my things it happened more than these days that [monikers] were really mixing up. I didn’t know what the whole techno thing was but I began experimenting with bass drum grooves, and sometimes I would just take a Delay track and make a groove remix out of it. Eventually I put that stuff out as an Uusitalo album. Also back in the early days I was just sitting in the studio long hours and making lots of stuff and not always having an overview of what was what, and it didn’t help I was doing quite a bit of drugs back then. I don’t have an intentional plan to mix between these projects these days.

What about with your groups? Does something learned while working with the Moritz Von Oswald trio influence some of your solo work?

Of course everything influences everything but I’d say all this is very subconscious. Nothing I could point my finger at and describe.

The Moritz Von Oswald Trio started in a live format. How did Vertical Ascent come about? Were these “patterns” that you had previously worked on live, or were they completely new studio ideas?

We made first patterns for this one concert in Berlin which was kind of a plan to see if the whole project would work and how. Seeing it did we continued working on these patterns and they ended up on the album as well albeit in quite refined versions.

What was the drum setup you used? Obviously it was no standard drum kit…

No kit at all. Lots of strange stuff I have been collecting and using on my solo stuff in very “hidden” ways.
Metal percussion sculptures hand-made by Pete Engelhart from New York City, Udu drums from Africa, Berimbau from Brazil, water cylinder drums, strange shakers and voodoo toys, etc. That’s my passion, the sounds. Nowadays I also play lots of conga drums and other hand drums which has again expanded the palette really nicely.

What is the idea behind your own Vladislav Delay Quartet? Do you use the same kinds of drums as you do in the Moritz von Oswald Trio?

No. With the Quartet I use a more traditional jazz set but I try to play it in original way and make it also sound unlike a traditional kit or drummer playing it even. With the Trio there’s lots of programmed beats from Moritz while with Quartet I will provide all the rhythms with the kit.

One would think that a move from Berlin to a small island in Finland would result in more solitary efforts, but this has proven to be quite wrong. In fact, your move seems to have signaled a shift in your work towards more collaboration. Is this a fair assessment? How else has the move impacted your productions?

Well many collaborative things began before moving, but really I have learned it doesn’t matter where you live, even with collaborations if you really want to do them. And I guess I’m more and more happy to do more than just solo work even though I still like that most. The move has impacted great results in my private and family life which will in turn of course greatly influence the work as well. I think the move was the best thing I could have done. Even if I’m a bit far away from everyone I feel more interested in doing things and inspired creatively, which I can’t say was the case while living in Berlin. Naturally that was the reason to move out of Berlin. Also, these days with planes and Internet it really doesn’t matter where you live. Every single interview I have done since I moved to Berlin has been at least partly about Berlin. To be honest the whole Berlin thing begins to come out of my ears. It’s just a city after all. Not a piece of diamond or Mecca or something.

Why did you choose to have collaborators for Tummaa under the Vladislav Delay name?

First of all, I wanted to make an album with Delay aesthetics but not use synths and samplers — sources I had used on previous albums. I wanted to use live elements and expand on sound sources, and because I can’t play that many instruments I had to look for potential contributors.

You decided to release Tummaa with the Leaf Label instead of on your own Huume. What was behind that decision? What lies in the future for Huume?

I think nothing lies in the future for Huume. It had its moment and time, but now times have changed so much from since I started the label and I am not willing or able to adjust to these changes. Such as selling less, pushing more, not having any fun anymore, dealing with business solutions instead of creative decisions, etc. I don’t have time for all this, and neither interest. So I decided to step back on this and look for labels that still seem to be able to be creative in these times. Maybe again in some years time I will decide to get back to releasing music by myself but a lot will have to change for that to happen.

What can we look forward to in the future from you in your many groups and monikers?

Quite a bit of new music in all fronts. I have spent the last year building a house and studio on the island and now that all that housekeeping stuff is more or less finished I can get back to what I really know and like doing. I feel really an urge to make new music and explore new possibilities. Even thought it might look like I have been busy I didn’t really have a chance to make music the last 12 months which has been healthy in a way but also troubling as I’d rather make music than anything else.

[Honest Jon's Records]

“Live” is a tricky word in electronic music. Live sets, even by favorite producers, are too often disappointing. In reducing performance to a traditional recital mode, selections are limited to the artist in question’s own tracks, a sense of flow can get lost in the shuffle, and worst of all, the performer is frequently seen doing little more than staring at a computer screen, occasionally clicking. The effects of this approach — not naming any names, but I’ve heard laptop sets which featured a sound uncannily reminiscent of the “you’ve got mail” tone — can be frustrating at best, depressing at worst. Part of what’s exciting about electronic dance music is the spontaneous flux, the dispersed authorship, the paradoxical live-ness of a great DJ set. So what’s the point of “live” performance, anyway?

With Vertical Ascent, Moritz Von Oswald, Sasu Ripatti, and Max Loderbauer offer a compelling argument in its favor. The Moritz Von Oswald Trio is appropriately presented like a jazz ensemble, in which the leader gets top billing but his numerically specified group is of vital importance. Though Von Oswald is the most eminent participant for his innovative and vastly influential work as half of Basic Channel, Maurizio, and Rhythm & Sound, to name a few, Ripatti and Loderbauer make their presence felt. In fact, Ripatti, better known as Luomo or Vladislav Delay, could arguably be considered the creative engine of the trio’s performance style. A trained jazz percussionist who cites Philly Joe Jones — the energetic drummer of Miles Davis’ first great quintet — as a major influence, Ripatti’s intricate, shifting rhythms, played on a drum set of his own construction, form a complex imaginary landscape for his bandmates to color with their inventive and emotive synth work. Loderbauer is also experienced with an improvisatory approach to live performance, in a mostly ambient mode with his earlier group Sun Electric and now with Tobias Freund in NSI.

None of this would matter if the music wasn’t fantastic, and there is no doubt it is. Each track is simply named “Pattern” and its respective number, but perhaps the plural would have been more appropriate. There are levels upon levels of patterns at work here that, in spite of frequent genre allusions, add up to something startlingly original. The drifting tones of “Pattern 1″ are anchored by a pulsating high-hat pattern that seems alternately jazzy, funky, or housey, while “Pattern 3″ seems to glide into and out of a Latin clavé. Ripatti never lets a loop rest, adding to and restructuring rhythms that both draw from and inspire complementary shifts in the synthesizers. “Pattern 2″ is the slowest, most ambient of the four tracks, its kick drum lurching between the sound of mallets striking guitar strings while Von Oswald sprinkles atonal Fender Rhodes improvisations on top. “Pattern 4″ is where the leader’s celebrated dub reggae influence — one of his most influential contributions to techno — is heard in full form. With sweeping synth washes coating a monstrous bass line and a strangely effervescent cowbell sound, the track sounds like Lee “Scratch” Perry and Edgard Varèse stuck in a space shuttle with nothing but a mixing board to keep them company.

The interplay we hear from this band — and it is a band — brings to mind the work and theory of another jazz legend, Ornette Coleman. Appearing in the late fifties with a style of improvisation in which timbre, melody, and rhythm became as or more important than harmony, Coleman shocked the music world with his radically innovative quartet — and later, for his landmark Free Jazz album, a double quartet — which in retrospect seems not only virtuosic, but downright telepathic. Coleman eventually gave a name to his improvisatory theory: harmolodics. This idea is, in many ways, is a precedent for dance music: though some DJs mix by key, most of us match beats and tones. The Moritz Von Oswald Trio has made this connection even more apparent, by using electronic instruments and dance styles to improvise freely in the manner of Coleman’s Free Jazz, for which almost nothing was written beforehand. Von Oswald edited Vertical Ascent together from parts of various freeform jam sessions recorded with Tobias Freund, bringing to mind Miles Davis and Teo Macero’s work in the 1970s when reel-to-reel audio tapes and scissors were instruments as essential as Miles’ trumpet.

Add the Moritz Von Oswald Trio to names like Octave One, Kraftwerk, Underground Resistance, and the few others on a short list of live electronic music performers who are truly worth hearing. We can only keep our fingers crossed that more appearances by this group are forthcoming; in the meantime, Vertical Ascent is an essential, absorbing listen.