Halo Cyan

Maybe you’ve already read the reviews that appeared in Pitchfork or Resident Advisor. Maybe this isn’t news to you. But if not, revel in this all-new record by Sasu Ripatti, the artist better known as Vladislav Delay (and also responsible for such big-selling projects as Luomo).

As part of the 2010 rebirth of Vladislav Delay-as-Sistol, he’s recorded a startling new full-length record entitled “On the Bright Side”, released to record shops and people’s music players last month in both CD and digital formats. Influenced and inspired by a range of a year’s worth of experimentations – with everything from vividly narcotic flashbacks and memories; to his production work and touring alongside the legendary Moritz von Oswald; to the vast array of ideas that Ripatti immersed himself in while reading aboard long flights from one gig to the next (or when squirreled away at his new home on the remote island of Hailuoto in northern Finland).

Yet almost despite all these experimentations, “On the Bright Side” is a suprisingly bold, poppy record, sounding far closer to a Luomo record than, say, a Vladislav Delay record. Ripatti has taken the brightness of the album’s title and wholly literalized and given it corporeal form with a range of garishly vibrant and buoyant synth melodies, alongside stroboscopic basslines that glitter loudly from one track to the next…each somehow managing to retain an air of practiced delicacy throughout the mix. (And, of course, as this is a very club- and DJ-friendly record, two collector-caliber 12” remix singles accompany the album, with all-star remixers such as Scuba, Redshape, Oneohtrix Point Never, Walls, and FaltyDL.)