Roughly a year and a half after his prior album as Uusitalo, the prolific Sasu Ripatti returns with a new collection of reliable and sometimes engrossing tracks targeted for progressive underground dancefloors. Though practically every one of its ten analogue cuts could keep a bespectacled Mutek crowd moving, his latest merely supplements his healthy catalog instead of strengthening it.
Whether via Luomo's Bohemian tech-house or the expansive soundscapes of Vladislav Delay, Sasu Ripatti apparently has an outlet and a moniker for each of his musical tendencies. Uusitalo, however, has become the one for his proper yet devious minimal techno productions, imbued with Berlin's dubby atmospherics and Detroit's post-modern melodies. 2006's Tulenkantaja, released on Ripatti's vanity label Huume, reminded listeners that this artist still had love for deep and engaging dance music, something criminally absent from Luomo's anticlimactic Paper Tigers, also released that year. Karhunainen, named for one of his father's plays, follows up that deferred sophomore release in prudently similar if slightly banal fashion. In this instance, the incredibly accomplished Ripatti hasn't quite mustered up a masterpiece, yet even an indistinct Uusitalo album holds my interest more than the vast majority of recent electronic music full-lengths out cluttering the market.
Opening with studio clatter and shifting filmic pads, Karhunainen misleads with the beatless "Vesi Virtaa Veri" before kicking into gear with the subsequent "Korpikansa." Its 4/4 percussion pokes around the subtle organ drones and giddy bassline, with once suppressed stabs urgently rising later in the mix. Nodding backwards to his heady days at the forefront of the clicks and cuts scene, "Sikojen Juhla" captures and loops a snippet of incomprehensible vocal over untamed elastic bass and bubbly bursts of sub-aquatic sound exploding like delicate fish roe. "Satumaa" impregnates the saucy MILF of Sheffield bleep with spindly bliss while the title track nimbly works its deep, spirited hook into the minimal mélange. Stepping away from the previous danceable fare, closer "Puut Juuriltaan" expertly wipes the floor clean with shimmering sunny warbles that would make Ulrich Schnauss blush. Fitting in quite well with the tones and moods of Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, the song leaves me wishing there had been more material like it on here. Perhaps yet another pseudonym is in order.
While not remotely as compelling as Whistleblower, released earlier this year on Huume, Karhunainen simply doesn't need to be. A respectable addition to Ripatti's catalog, it closes out a solid year of releases from one of the few Force Inc. / Mille Plateaux survivors.
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