- Sasu Ripatti's heaviest, most chaotic record yet.
- Putting Sasu Ripatti's experimental work into words feels like one of music journalism's most intimidating challenges. Sure, the Finnish producer dropped some hooky crossover microhouse as Luomo back in the early '00s. But his sounds tend to be more disconcerting than they are approachable, and over the past few years, Ripatti has really leaned into a new kind of unpredictability. Between 2020 and 2021, he dropped a rowdy footwork record under his last name, and before that put out two stormy, back-to-basics full-lengths called Rakka, when he sold all his equipment and started anew, inspired by his rugged Baltic surroundings. His latest, Isoviha, comes hot on the heels of another album (that one with guitarist Eivind Aarset), but was actually recorded four years ago. Centered on a dense and jagged instrumental palette. It's rough but rewarding.
Isoviha plays like Rakka with some of Ripatti's more sophisticated tools back in his arsenal. Like those albums, it's harsh and dissonant. But where both Rakka installments were pretty rhythmic, Isoviha is splotchy and unpredictable. In fact, it's discomforting before you even press play: The title references the Russian invasion of Finland in the 1800s (it means "big hate" in English), and some of the track title translations are fairly unsavory themselves (expressions like "a big hater," "big shit," and "big dick").
"Isonuha" opens with what sounds like the clack of a typewriter with hundred-pound keys, but by the end things have disintegrated into (somewhat) melodic ambience. On "Isosusi," Ripatti alternates between noisy bass tones and pummeling chopped vocal snippets. "Isovihane" sounds like the frenzied product of a free jazz band trying to scare off a hungry pack of wolves by playing their instruments as loudly as possible. Isohiva does everything in its disorienting power to draw your attention, though its more violent components become weirdly innocuous when digested at a lower volume, dulling the impact they might have otherwise had.
It wasn't always this blustery. Ripatti started Vladislav Delay back in 1999 as a home for clicks, cuts and dubby echoes. There's something about the sparseness of records like Entain and Multila that might be more unsettling than a chaotic album like Isoviha, which sounds nowhere near as desolate. If anything, this record's world is the exact opposite—metallic, futuristic, metropolitan—oppressive in a different way.
His life has changed a lot since those records, to be fair. In 2008, Ripatti moved from Berlin to the remote island of Hailuoto, which is situated in the Baltic Sea just South of the frigid Arctic wilderness. "Where I live now, there's no artificial life. There's no advertisement. I barely get a phone signal here. It just works better for me if I'm more in solitude," he told another RA writer in Bandcamp Daily during a 2020 interview. The impact of such a removed environment is felt on Isoviha, which makes the listener navigate their way around aural hurdles. It certainly doesn't feel like Ripatti even considered there being an audience when laying this one to tape, which is part of what makes the record so gripping. Sharp and fiery, Isoviha lacks any restraint, capturing the paradoxical multiplicity and singularity that makes all of Ripatti's output so memorable.
Tracklist01. Isovitutus
02. Isosusi
03. Isonuha
04. Isotv
05. iS
06. Isoteko
07. Isoviha
08. Isorakas
09. Isopaska
10. Isooo
11. Isovihane
12. Isomulkku
13. Isopieni