Browse by Label: HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)

Artist:	DELAY, VLADISLAV
Title:	Demo(n)tracks
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 001CD

"The Finnish producer known to most as Vladislav Delay, has created some of the more individual and distinctive sounds in modern electronic music. He is one of the few who picked up on the influences of the Basic Channel / Chain Reaction school of submerged techno and really took it somewhere new, creating sprawling masses of sound that slowly develop in a way that's hard to predict or sometimes even take in. The more ambient aspects of his approach were revealed through releases on Chain Reaction and Sigma Editions Very popular experimental label Mille Plateaux got in on the party, and Vladislav Delay's reputation as a producer of intriguing, often moody soundscapes was cemented. Then, just when listeners thought they had got the hang of what Vladislav Delay releases were about, the first Luomo 12" came out, and it was a vocal house record. Some were baffled, others thrilled. His personality was still very much in evidence; the Luomo records are still filled with unpredictable bursts of sound, sudden reversals and structures collapsing and re-forming. As with the more ambient work, tracks shift structure almost imperceptibly so at the end of 7 minutes you're somewhere quite different from where you began. Now Vladislav Delay returns with Demo(n) tracks, the first album on his own label Huume. Trying to avoid the common pitfalls and looking for a challenge in music, on this new album Vladislav Delay steps away from the old-trusted dub influences and eternal long soundscapes and tries to see for himself what the next step is, in a need to find a progression in personal music. The album comes out from 2 weeks spent chasing demons in Berlin. A reason to make music. Even though the signature sound is still there, the traces of work-in-progress and the evolution of an artist is evident; new steps are being taken towards sound sculpting and acoustic recordings, playing and treating drums, using and creating songs like sketches or diary, and flirting with sometimes negative aspects like coldness and digitus so often profound of latein (electronic) music. While embracing the audio technology, much care is taken not to let that DSP take over or outgun much more important elements in there; the content itself, and what was meant to be expressed and explored or was just suggested. Without a need or intent to copy but to rather originate, Demo(n)tracks, a collage of 13 tracks mixed together, resembles influences more from urban life than from any genre of music, but all the same from not one but all genres of music and moulds it into a music of its own. Vladislav Delay, intrigued by nature, is this time to capture something essential out of the whole and from the moment, and to represent and translate that which is unpolished and sincere to the listener. Demo(n)tracks is an approach to explore and experiment music."

Artist:	LUOMO/RAZ OHARA
Title:	Running Away EP
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 003EP

"Sensational collaboration between always hungry for new experiences Finnish producer Vladislav Delay under his Luomo alias and the Danish electronic soul troubadour Raz Ohara. Delay entertains a fruitful relationship with his surroundings. Driven by an ever-present inner restlessness Delay yet remains on the move, constantly performing around the world under his various aliases and musical projects. Just in a short time after his stunning release as Vladislav Delay with Demo(n) tracks (HUUME 001), this time he works together with Raz Ohara (also known as Patrick Rasemussen) Ohara's debut LP Realtime Voyeur is a funky parade of confidently groovy numbers that soar through the air, propelled forward by hip hop beats, electronic ambience, and impeccable production The second album The Last Legend was timeless and just in time for a world in the 21st century, minimal acoustic songs. revealing. emotional. simple and close. Their collaboration offers a kind of tribute to Michael Jackson during his 'Smooth Criminal' and 'Beat it' period, these songs put it all together -- classic pop hooks, R&B balladry, downtempo sensuality, dance music energy, minimal house -- and each one is carbonated by Ohara's thin 'time for love' voice."

Artist:	LUOMO
Title:	Vocalcity
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 004CD

A phenomenally classic year-2000 album (originally released by Force Tracks) by Luomo, the deep house moniker of Vladislav Delay. Now reissued with new artwork on Delay's own label, Huume Recordings. Fusing endless languid electronics, funk grooves, and deep house ambiance, this is the record that made the bedroom IDMers dance, and the house-freaks stay at home. To quote Philip Sherburne on this release, "squelching bass and keyboard lines lay down a syncopated foundation, but the real action bubbles up from indiscernible depths -- clicks and pops barely tethered to the rhythmic structure, aching sighs that suggest the birth of the desiring machine." Previously known for his stately minimalism and isolationism, on Vocalcity Delay takes his time and warms things up with the use of Johanna Niemelä's airy, fragmented vocals and the addition of lazy synth and dub-house echo, stretching tracks out well past the 10-minute mark. Comparisons have been drawn to Photek's "Mine To Give," the track from 2000's Solaris fronted by Robert Owens -- another release that did some unusual genre-blending. Vocalcity's appeal continues to be cross-denominational even today -- spacious, slow-moving and sexy. New Pitchfork review by Philip Sherburne gives it an off-the-map 9.7!!

Artist:	DELAY, VLADISLAV
Title:	The Four Quarters
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 005CD

Vladislav Delay (aka Luomo and Uusitalo) is a techno producer and one of the most highly-regarded Finnish innovators in experimental music and especially with the method referred to as clicks and cuts. The Four Quarters is his third release on his own Huume label, not counting his releases under his alter-ego Luomo. The longer, more ambient aspects of his approach were revealed through releases on Chain Reaction (Multila), Mille Plateaux (Entain, Anima) and Staubgold (Naima). This solo record continues the Delay tradition of intriguingly moody motifs in his most personal and intimate recording to date. Having become slightly sensitive and critical towards "electronic" music in some way, the composer challenged himself and set a goal to create an "electronic" album he'd like to hear and listen to. While ignoring labels and sub-genres and concentrating on sound and music instead, something of a personal revelation was experienced while producing The Four Quarters; for after having escaped the electronic sounds and his recent musical past for some time now it felt refreshing and inviting to go back to where it all had begun some ten years ago. A quest to find music not yet heard. This time around, though, it was possible for him to paint the picture with the exact colors he wanted; to realize his vision in sound and beyond. The soundtrack of Vladislav Delay. Music for the humans. As the title suggests, there are four lengthy pieces of music being offered for more than casual listening. During the making of this music, the utmost care was taken to create something for the pure pleasure of it, and nothing was protected or kept sacred, and no over-thinking or analyzing ever took over the artist. As always, Vladislav Delay is on the look-out for new and surprising elements, sounds and arrangements, and it might be that on The Four Quarters the aspect of sound design is taken to the furthest limits imaginable amongst all his works. The result is the unmistakable, warm sound of Vladislav Delay.

Artist:	DOLLS, THE
Title:	The Dolls
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 006CD

The Dolls are Vladislav Delay aka Luomo (Finland), Antye Greie aka AGF (Germany) and Craig Armstrong (Scotland). Huume Recordings are happy sponsors of this collaboration between three solo musicians, admirers and explorers. Craig Armstrong (Massive Attack, Moulin Rouge soundtrack) had heard AGF's (Antye Greie) music and became a fan. He invited Antye to sing on his second solo album, As If To Nothing, and they performed a few successful shows together, with Vladislav Delay as central groupie and sometime performer. Armstrong later recorded a few of the songs off his solo piano album Piano Works in Berlin at AGF/Delay's home studio, dipping into idea-sharing and collaboration. They recorded hours of piano played by Armstrong, bringing in their computers and various studio toys. And at times when the machines didn't do their thing anymore, then the piano itself became a platform for something new, going well beyond "treated piano." The Dolls believe in the soothing qualities in music, both as a catalyst for themselves while making it as well as for soothing frayed nerves for the modern condition. But this trio of authors also believe in the child-like catharsis of music-making, even to the point of nonsense. Using drums, piano and vocals, The Dolls take on character-roles, tell stories, and share intimate personal memory, transforming the pieces into multi-layered musical fantasy. Different generations with various backgrounds, musical ideas and visions meet here and mix-and-match there, leaving behind something you haven't heard before. This is an archive recording of a surprising and uncompromised musical event. Bliss.

Artist:	UUSITALO
Title:	Tulenkantaja
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 007CD

Berlin-based Vladislav Delay (aka Sasu Ripatti, Luomo) releases a second techno album under his Uusitalo disguise. Each track is inspired by Finnish literature, and is a tribute to his author father and grandmother. The title of the album, Tulenkantaja (a flame bearer), is taken from the name of a radical literary group in Finland in the early '40s to which his grandmother was a part of. Delay takes the best parts of Cologne and Berlin and transforms them into a method of storytelling that incorporates organic beats and rhythms close to the heart. On Tulenkantaja, Delay plays around with strange time signatures so subtly that you wouldn't notice if it wasn't 4-to-the floor but maybe 5 or 6 or 9-and-a-half. He creates poems with beats, telling stories with those intricate rhythms and bass lines. He invites interesting sounds that include living elements, mistakes, drums and field recordings. He synthesizes the synthesizer, and says goodbye to the drum machine looping the same loop and instead plays the loop himself. A true rhythm fanatic, on this record he searches for the patterns and rhythms more than ever -- they might be more simple or at least more straightforward and direct than on his Vladislav Delay albums. On this record he demonstrates not only his unique studio and production skills, but also the ability to speak and express himself highly in musical terms. On Tulenkantaja, he makes techno which may not be techno at all. Except that it is for him. There are excerpts from his father and grandmother in the booklet included with the CD, as well as a beautiful graphic design to enhance the experience made by long-time collaborator Kaisa Kemikoski. This time techno has a story to tell.

Artist:	DELAY, VLADISLAV
Title:	Multila
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 009CD

Originally released on Chain Reaction as in the year 2000, this cult album now finds its re-release on Huume Recordings. Multila brought together Vladislav Delay's vinyl releases for Berlin's Chain Reaction label, focusing on the dense, murky gritswirls and ghost voice traces that underlie this subtle artist's other works. The release was a landmark for the artist, as it was his favorite record label in the world that picked up his material, and if it was good enough for Chain Reaction it was good for anybody and everything. The original album was mastered by Moritz von Oswald/Basic Channel and the same exact audio is kept for the re-release. The re-release carries new artwork done by a long-time collaborator Kaisa Kemikoski, person behind most of the Huume Recordings artwork. As written for the original album: "Life films us exactly. Our experience of it, though, lies beyond images and descriptions. Emotions, coming in irrational flashes, are non-figurable. We lose our little connection to them very quickly. We look for forms with this in mind; that they can take us to meet the subconscious. Multila's construction is principled this way. Fragments of experience, moments without definition or localization are captured within tiny fragments of time and then within one's mindspace. We can look into it and see that experience has left some of its data to us. as we receive it, again and again, we are connected and reconnected to certain indefinable moments. Both during and after its recording, Multila is a tool to learn about the unintentional states ... to see your own emotional loops. Multila is a soundtrack for vision." --Vladislav Delay, 2000

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:	DELAY, VLADISLAV
Title:	Whistleblower
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 013CD

This is Vladislav Delay's (aka Luomo) fourth release on his own Huume label. If the true index of one's artistic vitality is the adherence to one's own musical language, Vladislav Delay seems to be developing a dragon spirit. The year 2007 marks a satisfying 10-year anniversary for the artist; it was in 1997 he released his first solo EP The Kind Of Blue on his own label. Had he continued with the label back then it would also be a full ten years of Huume Recordings today but instead, he begun his run of critically-acclaimed releases for labels like Chain Reaction and Mille Plateaux for the next few years to come (Huume Recordings was re-established in 2004). Whistleblower: a working title influenced by surrounding circumstances, describing the mood and receptions around the time of making the album. His work doesn't normally involve any politics but in the last few years it's been impossible for him to not let some current global events sneak into the work, as an underlying influence shaping his creative atmosphere. Contrary to inconceivable pipe-dreams, Delay confesses some bewilderment at the cruel reality of world affairs and how much and what kind of headlines they create. He's very taken with the idea that what he does is just his environment shaping his productions in turn, just as his and everyone else's productions and actions are shaping the world as well. His far-flung soundscapes and futuristic sound-processing are merely a way to analyze and handle the contemporary. Motifs that may appear trashy or messy to the uninitiated -- sound exploration, distortions, dub technologies -- can in fact be for him surprisingly sophisticated tools for dissecting and examining the world as it is, piece by piece, layer after layer. How he turns it out in the end is as if hundreds of radios were left playing all at once, magically staying somewhat in synch. Whistleblower displays somewhat a resurgence of his older drug-infused soundstates; those utopian audio-visions large and vast enough to hide away from reality. This is not background music, this is a series of rhythmic conversations and cinematographic sound-visions spread across the audible spectrum, challenging the possible and pushing boundaries. In the end, these ultimately personal musical visions speak to the persistent transience of modern life and art, like so many commodities in our ultra-retail environment, so hyper-linked and so video-clipped together, that there is scarcely any room left for more input, all the while the content is consumed so fast that the need for more is greater than ever.

Artist:	UUSITALO
Title:	Karhunainen
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	HUUME 014CD

Berlin-based Vladislav Delay (aka Sasu Ripatti, Luomo) releases a third techno album under his Uusitalo disguise. Influenced by and named after his late father's well-known theatre play, Karhunainen (Bear Woman) Delay continues to search for his rhythmic roots. With his groove offerings from the past he often resembled an undertaker at a disco. This new album might change some of those impressions, with more up-front beats than he has ever created before. In spite of being noted for experimental sounds and compositions not yet heard, some of his warmest feelings are reserved for the drum beat. This deep-rooted loyalty to rhythms, even though hidden and strangled in most of his productions, is about to come to the surface again. And above all else, he is a rhythm passionista, a drum collector, a cymbal maker -- a true percussion freak. The new album consists of 10 songs, 8 of which are dedicated to the infamous bass drum. In an act of conspicuous non-consumption, he chose to only use analog equipment on this album and leave all digital sound processing out, which explains the warm and full sound of the album. His rhythmic fortune is used to great effect on Karhunainen -- he quite wonderfully replaces the drum machines on more than a few tracks with a drum stick and anything else he could hit, be it random metal surfaces or his young daughter's toys. To complete the album, there's hauntingly beautiful tracks with cinematic beginnings and endings. This is a mix of traditionalism and futurism, coming through in the song titles, artwork and design. The artwork is by Kaisa Kemikoski, but the booklet also introduces another aspect of the producer himself; he's a keen photographer and his private collection captures the world around him, making up the raw material for the 16-page booklet.

Artist:	DELAY, VLADISLAV
Title:	Anima
Label:	HUUME RECORDINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HUUME 015CD

Huume Recordings re-release of Vladislav Delay's (Luomo) classic Mille Plateaux album, originally released in 2001, including a previously-unreleased alternate version. Anima is an opus of over 60 minutes, a continuous mix that reveals itself beyond audio design. Delay succeeds in developing his new, atypical methods of production: rather than familiar electronic traits of looping sounds, Anima continually develops in an organic flow, thus giving the interpretation that perhaps the music is less a digital excursion and more an instrumental development. Vladislav Delay is setting on potentials, effects and impulses of the never-heard: a new world of audio. Furthermore: the word "anima" is a psychological term meaning "an inner feminine part of the male personality." Both the artwork and the music, demure and beautiful, perfectly reflect these qualities. The original song is indexed as a single 62-minute track, a continuous flow that constantly, unpredictably shifts gears while retaining recurrent themes and coherence. The sound set is a vast, atmospheric sonic sandbox of Arctic synth pads, low-end blips and throbs, fragments and smears of fractured audio and an expansive selection of percussive minutiae. Melody and rhythm are sometimes more implied than expressed, allowing your brain to fill in the blanks, and at other times they coalesce effortlessly, flawlessly and gracefully all on their own. The recording marked a decisive change and break in Delay's production style from programming/sequencing to playing live; the whole album was played from beginning to finish in full takes, instrument by instrument and sound by sound with only a minimum of editing or post-production. The original recording is joined by the author's previously-unreleased favorite version of Anima at a slower speed. Edited and produced in 2008, it's a collage/remix of the original, offering a different view of this important piece of electronic music.

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.

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