I was pretty unimpressed with the last Luomo album, 2008’s Convivial. Polite, jazzy chords over genteel house beats were not really what I was expecting from the doyen of progressive minimalism, even if it was one of Sasu Ripatti’s other aliases. This, combined with the fact that he has been finding outlets for his experimentalism elsewhere (in the Moritz von Oswald Trio and AGF/Delay), left me approaching Tummaa with some trepidation. Perhaps it’s a side effect of lowered expectations, perhaps it’s that my own tastes are just closer to Vladislav Delay than his other outlets, but Tummaa is offering up continual intrigue, miniscule detail and a captivating, sustained mood which I’m really enjoying.
The seven tracks are all extended explorations, averaging around ten minutes each. Ripatti plays with intricate snatches of sound throughout. Opening with ‘Melankolia’, those previously mentioned jazz leanings are put to good use, with abstract minor key piano impressions forming a bed for the rhythmic shards to flitter around.
‘Mustelmia’ is the only track that utlilises anything like a traditional dance beat, though here it’s fairly murky and spends the last third of the track desperately trying to halt itself from being immersed in a watery grave of phase effects and analogue synth pulses. Elsewhere, rhythms are deployed in extreme slow motion, never quite coalescing into grooves. A range of timbres are swirled around these, from micro-glitches to warm baths of analogue plastic and blobs of bass ooze. There are hints at structure, but just enough to draw you in before devolving into something else, a sonic cat and mouse play. Much of the overall mood approaches ambience, but the amount of movement keeps it from disappearing into the ether. There are nods to the nu-new-age underground, but Ripatti shows us what it can sound like with good production (for the record, I’m preferring this clarity of detail, though some of the psycho-politics are admittedly absent, but I’m coping without them).
With his copious output, the overall high level of quality control demonstrated across Ripatti’s catalogue is quite impressive. Tummaa adds to that catalogue and pushes valiantly into its own new territories.
Adrian Elmer
