Sistol
On the Bright Side
Sasu Ripatti’s (aka Sistol) last album, the 1999 Sistol, helped pioneer the reduction of House into dance music less focused on shuffling feet than piquing headphone interest. Since then, he released scores of diverse records under the monikers Vladislav Delay, Luomo, Uusitalo, AGF/Delay (with his life partner Antye Greie-Fuchs) and has appeared on too many compilations to mention. So the question for a new Sistol record is “why?” For an artist as forward-moving as Ripatti, a gear-limited, reverse engineered shift to pick up where he left off eleven years ago is a puzzling move. Maybe not?
There are five new Sistol collections (remixes from [a]pendics.shuffle and Alva Noto, remakes, remasters) with On the Bright Side intended as the bookend for Ripatti’s neo-techno series; it is similar to the early work, but his years of experience and unavoidable production enhancements have turned it into the object that disappears under mysterious circumstances, then returns…changed. Still employing a minimal palette, he works the big non-evolving bass drum of “(Permission to) Avalanche” into a neo-industrial stomp under a repeating soggy bass dyad, doubling string stabs and a wandering splatter of blips, leads and soaring artifacts. Following the same plodding tempo, the rubbery pulse, cloudburst snare and torpid whistles give “Hospital Husband” the impression of a Depeche Mode B-side – circa1990, of course – until it sinks into echoing bells and mod wheel tugs (this manual coaxing occurs on most of the tracks, as Ripatti is insistent about breathing life into otherwise mechanical sterility via knob twists).
With most of Ripatti’s work, his strongest moments happen when he concentrates on the division and attack of each word in “microsound”. On “Fucked-Up Novelty”, the push of melody and countermelodies to the back in favor of a foreground of squirrely modular-esque synth and feedback atonalities creates a dizzying texture and the perfect distraction from the static pulse running throughout the track.
Again, the point of Ripatti’s Sistol project isn’t one of progression, as marginal as it may be. This is a time machine, there and back, for his indulgent self-discovery. As the man said in and interview a few years back (The Wire 288), “For better or worse I repeat the things I like, even though I try to push myself into new directions. Some things stick – you stick to them, they stick to you”.
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