Browse by Artist: LUOMO

Artist:	LUOMO
Title:	Tessio Remixes
Label:	GREAT STUFF RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	GSR 087EP

"Right for the Ibiza season, this is the fantastic second remix package of the unbeatable deep house classic from Luomo. After the very successful and highly acclaimed remixes from Stimming and Spektre, the two Great Stuff homies Butch and Ramon Tapia prove that they are worth every penny. As the same time sensual and floor-friendly, these mixes should reign the clubs this summer 2009. Pure class again on the Great Stuff Roots Edition."

Artist:	LUOMO
Title:	Paper Tigers
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 010CD

Vladislav Delay is finally back as Luomo. Widely regarded as one of dance music's most forward-thinking producers, Luomo has recorded for Kinetic/BMG and Force Tracks, done remixes for DFA and Massive Attack and started up his own label called Huume. Paper Tigers is the new Luomo, it is out on his own Huume label, it is brilliantly lush and expansive dance music, and it is here to stay. As the trends of electronic music shift like Saharan sands, there are a few releases which stand as classics. One of those belongs to Luomo: Vocalcity (2000). An impossibly deep record with a smoky vision of the dancefloor, Vocalcity did to house music what Aphex Twin's Classics did to techno -- it accentuates the genre's most developed signifiers until it became art. For Luomo, House music is an aquatic experience, vocals are edited, beats are environments and atmosphere extends outward past the solar system and inwards towards the ear canal, until the two meet at your feet. He continued to pioneer the new House sound with the release of the smooth and sexy The Present Lover (2003) -- but Paper Tigers calculates a future house. House music that is delicately crafted from disco-ball shards. House music that filters vocals through space-age parabolics. House music that transcends the dancefloor and leaps into your eardrums. That Luomo is Finnish cannot be overlooked. Brought up on sound as art, away from the super-clubs of Ibiza or London, he brings a fresh perspective. Using the English lyrics of a famous Finnish jazz vocalist (Johanna Iivanainen), the vocals sound practically Martian. Her technique is signature Luomo and here the magic amplifies on tracks like "The Tease is Over" and "Really Don't Mind." Ambient house begins to enter his pallette as well with songs like the title track and "Make Believe." Luomo also employs the vocals of Wire magazine cover star AGF (Antye Greie) on one track. So Vlad is back as Luomo, and it is as though he has never left. House music will never be the same... until he returns... again.

Artist:	LUOMO
Title:	Really Don't Mind
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 011EP

Huume Recordings presents the first 12" single "Really Don't Mind" from the third Luomo (Vladislav Delay) album Paper Tigers. The release includes the album version of the song and an exclusive vinyl-only club mix. On "Really Don't Mind," vocals are courtesy of Johanna Ilvanainen, a long-time collaborator and one of the most well-known jazz singers in Finland. This first single from the album offers a long-evolving song with a creative arrangement. The song could be chart-hitting hyper-pop if so wanted but in Luomo's world it turns into original and experimental dancefloor beauty few dare to make, or can think of. In addition, the B-side features a brave and minimal club version for the adventurous.

Artist:	LUOMO
Title:	Convivial
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUUME 016CD

Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay, Uusitalo) is the Finnish producer and head writer behind the project Luomo, his musical outfit that has redrawn the very boundaries of what "house music" can achieve. Convivial is his fourth album as Luomo. In addition to long-time collaborator Johanna Iivanainen, Convivial features a semi-underground star cast of collaborators such as Cassy, Sascha Ring (Apparat), Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters), Robert Owens, Sue-C and one anonymous singer who hides behind the name Chubbs. The album in question is not so much an assembly as a series of commentaries, interspersed with contemporaneous studio stylings and entries from travel diaries he kept while working on the album. For the first time there is a real collaboration with the singers; where he didn't write all the lyrics himself but left plenty of room for other lyrics and musical ideas. Cassy participates on a dancefloor-friendly song, while Sascha Ring makes a touching appearance singing a semi-ballad. Jake Shears adds a touch of glamour, while Sue-C takes lead vocals. Classic house vocalist Robert Owens gets a soul treatment, while Johanna Iivanainen vocalizes in experimental pop form. Aside from great production, the charm of listening to Luomo's music lies in his ability to put people at ease even when he doesn't share a common language or theme with them, with vocals becoming like instruments among synthesizers, effects and other machines. More than anything, his Kafka-esque productions come with a wonderful petulance that bring more depth and meaning to dance music in the bigger picture. The Luomo project is nothing less than a great tragedian, holding a mirror before a music society that sometimes would like to hear less stories. Nevertheless, he finds the dance music medium most suitable for his pop explorations, which has earned marked respect for its wide-ranging catalog of unique no-frills releases, with Convivial certainly being no exception.

Artist:	LUOMO
Title:	The Present Lover
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 70202CD

Re-issue of Finn-turned-Berliner Luomo's (aka Vladislav Delay) now-classic second album, originally released by the Force Tracks/BMG label in 2003 (licensed to the Kinetic label in the U.S. -- that version is now deleted). The debut of his Luomo alias began with Vocalcity (2000), a pared-down masterpiece of soulful subtlety that teased the high-gloss garb of vocal house into a sexy skitter of glitchcraft and hazy echo. Despite its assured flair and roots in Delay's familiar sound palette, it retained the investigative, experimental spirit of an outsider's perspective, at once deeply committed to the conventions of house and subversive of them. Though Delay still professes his outsider status, the scrubbed sheen that marks The Present Lover rattled listeners expecting a return to more ethereal dancefloors. His sophomore effort infuses the preceding strands of dubby, minimal house with a rich vein of sophisticated pop. Whereas Vocalcity whittled the vocals of house down to filtered rasps coiled into sensuously ambiguous ciphers, The Present Lover presses them to the forefront to simultaneously polarizing and mesmeric effect -- flirting with the trappings of disco excess, seducing house's most unabashed populist tendencies. "Visitor" possesses gauzy synths and erratic bass pops that wrap around breathy female vocals, "So You" charts a similar course atop a tide of off-beat hi-hats and rubber band bass that propels a stream of warm dub echo as the sole refrain. "Cold Lately" builds momentum from a procession of clipped vocal fragments and atomized bass that split and suspend the assuredness of the 4/4 pulse into tense pauses in sympathy with its haunted vocals. "What Good" withholds its floor-rattling hooks for what feels like an aching eternity while Delay snips its introductory pleas into increasingly desperate blips before unleashing a tide of anthemic choruses and anchored kick drum thump. As the final vocal hook of "Shelter" detaches from its bass foundations and ascends into infinite reverb, there's something that suggests that Delay has refined the core elements of both classic house and its minimal reincarnations and wandered into something newer and bolder. The Present Lover is neither crass genre exercise nor blind tribute, but something altogether more imaginative and strange. It's simultaneously accessible and deeply mysterious, a set of slinky exteriors wrapped around a spiky and desperate center as nervously detached as the album cover model's emptily lustful gaze. Whether a brilliant revision of what has come before or a template for things to come, The Present Lover is as taut and sexy as a black dress and as tantalizing as a half-heard whisper on the dancefloor -- immediate, intriguing, essential.

Artist:	LUOMO
Title:	PLUS
Label:	MOODMUSIC (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	MOOD 016CD

Luomo aka Vladislav Delay, Sistol, Uusitalo -- under a raft of names Finnish artist Sasu Ripatti has in the past experimented with ambient, broken beat, glitch as well as grooves and house music with soulful vocals, working with Scissor Sisters, Black Dice, Apparat, Craig Armstrong, Massive Attack, Robert Owens and Towa Tei. Luomo is about experimenting with pop music, a big influence for Ripatti, and bringing it into a fusion of house, disco and electronica. PLUS is Luomo's fifth album, taking the songwriting abilities of Ripatti to a new level, dwelling deep into first generation Chicago house and the pop sensibilities of '80s London, coupled with his impeccable crossover pop appeal. Never going for a one formula approach, PLUS has a distinct Luomo sound -- hypnotic, sexy and delicately insistent, rhythms following a self-movement and never standing still. Conquering the world of electronics with a hi-tech approach, PLUS grabs the listener mostly because of the soul infused into the works. Sometimes cold and brittle, at other times warm and ductile, the deeply-layered backgrounds make way for outstanding vocal performances which are this time credited to the cryptically-named Chicago Boys, a boy group of more or less known vocalists. Songs like "Good Stuff" and "Shy" are pure pop-bliss, while "Form In Void" and "Twist" shimmer in glacial electronics and gliding synths, all keeping the focus on the organic vocals to extend the album's scope and reach far beyond expectations. The less song-focused, synth-driven tunes like "Medley Through" and "How You Look" are undoubtedly reflecting the early Luomo sound from Vocal City (2000) and The Present Lover (HUUME 70202CD, 2003), and combined with his finest songwriting makes a cohesive album which actually can and should be listened to as one whole piece.

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