Sasu Ripatti, in the shadow of his pseudonyms, is a drummer and electronic musician from Finland. Known for uniquely distorted takes on a variety of electronic music, his signature sound is often infused with elements of dub, pop and ambient experimental sounds. It combines arrhythmic structures with aleatory elements and sensual, layered textures.
Born in remote Oulu, Northern Finland in 1976, Ripatti grew up steeped in the classical music and jazz that his literary parents loved. His early training as a percussionist is now transmuted - endlessly reinterpreted and twisted into new forms while retaining a fundamental rhythm orientation. By the mid-90s, Ripatti had begun incorporating electronic elements into his various band performances as he gradually taught himself to use samplers and drum machines through experimentation. Eventually, he found more satisfying results could be achieved going solo with his equipment than staying with any band, so he sold his elaborate acoustic kit and went underground to work on music in seclusion.
Ripatti's earliest releases were via his Vladislav Delay project. He began playing live in Helsinki in the late 90s, with one of the performance recordings becoming the first Vladislav Delay release. The musical approach he used found a sympathetic home on Berlin label Chain Reaction, and from 2000 Ripatti went on to produce some of their most classic records.
His forte is the rhythm, even if so subtle at times. In fact, he may as well still be classified as a "percussionist" rather than an electronic musician despite the fact that that is how he mostly generates his sound and music, because it is the beat and its possibilities which lie closest to his heart, which further serves to explain why he has experimented with it from so many different musical angles.
Ripatti uses Vladislav Delay to excavate new territory slowly and deeply, constantly striving to uncover fresh terrain on which to collapse and rebuild his delicate structures. Through Delay, Ripatti continually challenges himself to maintain his own personal sonic integrity - wary of much programmed 'electronic' music, he forges his own path.
He has worked with a wide range of artists including Craig Armstrong, Scissor Sisters, AGF, Black Dice, Massive Attack, Towa Tei and Ryuichi Sakamoto. He has released music on small independents, major labels and his own imprint since 1997. After seven years of living and working in Berlin, Germany, he recently relocated to an island of Hailuoto in northern Finland.
Kinovida is a new project by visual artist Lillevan & Vladislav Delay. Using fragments from a selection of European films, that are processed, collaged & condensed in real-time into a new possible film. It is not a scientific analysis of film, but a sensual and artistic synthesis of structural and emotional aspects of film composition, a dream-like hommage to the innovations of various European film movements, a seamless tribute to historical and open-ended narratives. Films from East and West are referenced, exploring the emotional waves and vibrant visual vocabulary of European Cinema.
Uusitalo, one of the projects produced by Vladislav Delay around the turn of the millennium. He released three albums: Karhunainen and Tuelnkantaja on his own Huume Records, and Vapaa Muurari on Force Inc. back in 2000. For the last album, Ripatti utilized an all analogue technique with no digital sound procession, resulting in a very warm and organic sound, which adds to natural and all-enveloping sound which comsumes the listener. It could be said that this projects is sonically half-way between his Vladislav Delay and Luomo monikers.
Agf/Delay is a collaboration with German sound-artist and poet Antye Greie. Thir first full-lenght album Explode was recorded in the summer of 2004 in north Finland, with a production process basically cut off from civilization. Finally released in 2005, the album strippes both musical concepts of Greie and Delay to the bone. Gone are the more glitchy, ultra-processed vocals of some of Greie's previous solo works, and mostly gone is the ultra-complex rhythm programming that Delay had done under his own name. Their 2nd album release Symptoms has been recently released on Bpitch Control. It picks up exactly where Exlode left off: futuristic pop music with singer-songwriter-gestus and tons of depth.
The Vladislav Delay Quartet involves highly acclaimed artists such as Mika Vainio (of Pan Sonic) on electronics, Derek Shirley on double bass and Lucio Capece on reeds. The Quartet is the his latest project, which will be recording its first material exactly over the course of the Dis-patch festival, at the studio 13 of Radio Belgrade.