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"Profiler is a Nu-Metal reawakening from the mind of vocalist and guitarist Mike Evans.
This band is inspired by those who have incited change in genres, arts, and theories. It's a weight of legacy that Profiler is comfortable shouldering, backed by SharpTone Records, its home since 2020.

After starting as a solo project in Bristol, UK, Mike stepped out from the studio and onto the stage, enlisting bassist/vocalist Joe Johnson and drummer Oscar Hocking. In early 2023, Oscar departed to be replaced by Brad Ratcliffe, cementing the line-up that would forge 2024 debut album, A Digital Nowhere.

Profiler's nu-metal-grunge-alt-rock, call it what you want, is an abrasive distorted soundscape that reverently glances back to those genres' heydays. Profiler is for anyone who misses or missed the contagious nineties Seattle grunge movement or the explosion of nu-metal that dominated the 00s and the genre-bending bands they made a path for. "

Milanese club experimentalist Piezo takes a novel approach for his label’s seventh release: for the first time, the label head takes himself out of the equation entirely, instead donning his curatorial hat to pull together a vital selection of mind-bending club weapons spanning the 150-160 bpm bracket, bringing together a global crew of trailblazing sound adventurers.

The fourth release from Cartulis Music's sublabel, ALT, is brought to you by the freshly formed French duo known as AV1. This will be the first record of a 2-part series by the newly formed duo under ALT.

AV1 is a project helmed by the seasoned producer and DJ, Chris Carrier, who has been making waves in the music scene since the late '90s. Accompanied by Le Loup, another stalwart of the Parisian music scene, this dynamic duo shares a profound passion for acid and classicist house/techno grooves.

The EP kicks off with "Light Gate," a mesmerizing, steady techno journey infused with subtle trance elements and harmonious pads that captivate both the mind and the body. The A side follows with "Origins," an effortlessly flowing breakbeat composition adorned with just the right touch of acid, crafting an enigmatic yet inviting ambiance.

On the B side, we go deeper with "98% Safe," a dynamic track that seamlessly transitions from euphoric synths and bursts of color to mind-bending acid grooves and ominous undertones. This sonic tapestry is expertly woven together through innovative sampling techniques and a sense of fluidity. Bringing the record to a sublime close is "8 OG," a dreamy electro piece perfectly suited for a multitude of settings, it’s a sonic journey that beckons us to join in and experience it firsthand.

repressed !

Say what you wanna say, but you have to give Strahil Velchev this: the man's a powerhouse. Recording and playing live under the KiNK alias, he went on to become one of finest purveyor's of funk in techno and house. What it is, by definition, ain't exactly clear. And that is the beauty of it.

KiNK's music is unifying in the best possible way. Channeling the spirit and feeling of a time where it didn't really matter who the faces behind the music were, KiNK plays with the elements of genres and sub-genres as if the future of it all is still wide-open. At the same time it could be accused of retro-fetishism, as much as the Pope himself is infallible.

The pure need to recreate moments, feelings and experience - rather than carbon copies of existing designs - was what started KiNK's production work. Hailing from Bulgaria, it was nearly impossible to get your hands on all the records and music that fed into a system of raves, clubs and record shops that seemed far away from Sofia, and financially it might as well have meant another galaxy. Wanting to DJ without having access to the tracks that spun the carousel meant that you had to create them yourselves. So, here we go with a private bootlegger gone public mastermind and one of the loudest voices in house, techno and beyond.

From KiNK's early productions with Neville Watson to his smash-hit for Ovum, a cerebral album for Macro, tons of remixes & tracks and his mind-bending live act, Playground seems to take all that into a blender. Simultaneously a sound-summary, the harvest of a field of ideas, and the exhibition of an artist in his prime, it also works as a sort of KiNK dictionary: avant-garde soundscapes stand next to boisterous bangers, classic club tracks and peak time emotions find their idiosyncratic and contemplative counterparts - all of it coming down like a torrent in a drought.

Vladislav Delay presents the fifth and last EP in his "Hide Behind The Silence" series. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton".

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Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it never stops breathing. It’s filled with tiny particles, dancing. Everything can be explained on a molecular level, but since we’re not scientists – and even if you happen to be – it’s the natural world of perception that moves me.
Still air is very similar. A hot summer’s day with zero wind feels completely still. It’s the closest I have felt to complete stillness. Or for a more urban adaptation, imagine the same vibe inside a normal apartment. In those moments, revelations and mind- blowing experiences can be had with experiments in stillness.
Try this: Just sit down for a minute on a sunny day, making sure there’s enough natural light. Do absolutely nothing. Try not to breathe for a bit. (If you need a mental anchor, you can play Cage’s 4’33” in your head but nothing else.) Watch the tiny dots of dust dancing :..’ ̈.:; ́ ́*°.,’:,. ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈:,.’
The movement is crazy, but the feeling of stillness comes from witnessing how subtle it is. In (perceived) complete stillness, every act of microscopic mobility seems to speak volumes. Yet, it feels both reassuring and oddly threatening that the stillness is never complete. What if we would need absolute stillness? Or is it just enough that we can perceive something as such? Extremes attract, so for both water and air, extraordinary movement is equally fascinating. That is also a luxury item of sorts. For us to enjoy a very ”loud” body of water or air, we need to be safe, in enough control of the situation. So when you are, it’s worthwhile to pay attention and take it all in.
A rapid flowing free with extreme strength and just barely in control. Look at that water go! No still water on this one, only ”sparkling”. A windy day when birds seem surprised how hard it is to fly, but in the end they make it. Trees bend but don’t break. The wind shows you its movement but doesn’t hurt you. It feels friendly, like a big clumsy dog that doesn’t quite understand its size.
It’s beautiful to be a guest of the elements, but not at the mercy of them. A new kind of dialogue forms.

For their first album, Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa joined forces and became multidimensional creative dissidents Lost Souls Of Saturn. This time, even further into the vortex, they’ve metamorphosed into sci-fi AR comic characters John and Frank who’ve explored the galaxy and returned with this perception-melting new LP.

Although ‘Reality’ still possesses the wigged-out conceptual brilliance which garnered installations and performances at Saatchi Gallery (London), Fondation Beyeler (Basel), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, plus live sets at Field Day, Glastonbury and Kappa Futur, as its title might suggest, there’s vividness amidst the mind-bending. Where its predecessor was a murky exploration of weird and dark cerebral passageways, this album – though still fathoms deep – has a dazzling clarity of sound, as if listeners are beginning to crack the arcane codes, and reach for enlightenment.

A prime example of these newfound beams of light guiding participants through the maze is their recent single; the chugging cosmic techno synth pop of ‘Mirage’, featuring the voice of Adam Ohr. Also guesting on the album is Lvv Gvn, whose honeyed Billie-Holiday-meets-Rickie-Lee-Jones tones adorn the tranquil pixelated broken beat of ‘Click’, Greg Paulus’s trumpet sessions on ‘Zorg Arrival’ and ‘Scram City’, and Protomartyr’s vocalist Joe Casey and guitarist Greg Ahee, who grace the liminal drifting celestial plane of ‘Lilac Chasers’. Sitarist Rishab Sharma, the last disciple of guru Ravi Shankar, also shreds on ‘Scram City’.

Elsewhere, across the LP’s immensely inventive instrumental passages techno, dub, house, jazz, psych and ambient are vapourised into an expansive yet pleasingly concise series of morphing dream states. Fans of Air Liquide, Ravi Shankar, Ray Manzarek, Carl Craig, Pole, The Orb and ‘Son Of A Lung’ era FSOL should find much to like.

Desmond Dekker recorded some of his best known songs together with his backing group the Aces. Their single “007 (Shanty Town)” made him Jamaican music’s first outernational superstar, reaching the 14th place in the UK charts. The Leslie Kong produced Double Dekker was first issued in 1973 and consists of the best material Desmond recorded during his early years. In 1969 he scored a number one hit with the legendary song “Israelites”. You’ll hear how the Ska music from the mid-60s developed to the Rocksteady sound. This was “Ska” or “Blue Beat”—(or its new name for the slower tempo “Rock Steady”), and the lyrics come from the Calypso-Mento method of telling about current events in music. He was really at his prime from 1969 to 1971, and recorded classics such as “It Mek” (1969) and “You Can Get It If You Really Want” (1970), which you’ll both find on this record. Even before Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff Jamaica already had their own international superstar, Desmond Dekker was his name.

Double Dekker is available as a limited edition of 750 individually numbered copies on orange coloured vinyl.

Founding member of Band of Horses, Tyler Ramsey, returns with his fourth solo, full length studio record “New Lost Ages” - finding him facing the harsh realities of the world as we know it. Fans of Ramsey’s former projects, Father John Misty and Lord Huron will find “New Lost Ages” to be a relatable reprieve - one that feels both familiar and starkly new. Traversing genre-bending terrain, the new record from Ramsey is as indie and psych-rock as it is singer-songwriter, showcasing his talent and dedication to the craft.

***After birthing Street Riffs, their hi-definition, hi-energy, statement from 2020, CCR Headcleaner turned inward. The retreat from the pro-studio to the home studio was partially by design and partially decided by global events. Cleaner is very much a pandemic album, more of a homespun head trip than its predecessors. At the same time guitarist, songwriter and spiritual center of the group, Lacey Emmanuel, left the Bay for the shores of Lake Michigan. By most accounts an apocalyptic live-band became by and large a home recording animal. This is most apparent when Headcleaner turns up the balladry. “Don’t Feel the End” is a proto-metal campfire anthem, and “Everyday” hovers somewhere between keyboard misfit John Bender and the White Album. Make no mistake, the record will still be filed under “Punk” at your local record shop. It kicks off with “the brining pt. 2” the hottest slice of Funhouse free-rock that the band has committed to record. “Too Much” gives us its jail abolition rap over a two chord hardcore stomp. In a town (San Francisco) that is experiencing something of a DIY pop renaissance, Headcleaner has always fought to establish the fact that they have actual songs. This is no 70s throwback, but instead an attempt to up the ante. Without all the rock histrionics, technical arrogance and misogyny can the rock riff deliver on its ultimate promise: heavy music for total liberation. All tracks were mixed and lovingly fucked with by none other than Eric Bauer at his Bauer Mansion (RIP) Chinatown SF.

In 2013 Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu issued their ‘Valonielu’ LP, an album of timeless creative immensity that was met with ubiquitous praise throughout the world, and solidified the band’s position as one of the most forward-thinking and interesting metal bands. Now Oranssi Pazuzu returns with the follow-up album and fourth overall, the mind-bending masterwork ‘Värähtelijä’. Oranssi Pazuzu, since birth, has never been satisfied to stick with a formula. Each album has seen the band expand upon its previous incarnation and then, like a supernova, blow it up and transform again into something recognizable but completely new. ‘Värähtelijä’ continues in this vein, giving the band much more room to diverge and explore the vast regions of hypnotic progressive psychedelia and the nebulous outer limits of Scandinavian black metal. Songs explode with radiant ultraviolet color and plunge into the deep black darkness of innermost consciousness. If ‘Valonielu’ was the creation of a universe, ‘Värähtelijä’ is the magnification and expansion of its infinite boundaries. Not meant for genre purists, Oranssi Pazuzu are on a trip all their own; modern electric pioneers on an expedition to unlock the keys to the hidden spaces all around and inside us.

Canadian/American poet, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Vera Sola makes timeless, mind-bending sound, evoking comparisons to Nick Cave, Nancy Sinatra, Leonard Cohen and PJ Harvey. Following debut album Shades (2018), written, performed and produced entirely alone, her new album Peacemaker will be out in February 2024 on City Slang.

A counterculture movement united by an expansive, experimental and deeply soulful sensibility, Japan’s rebel protest music challenged the status quo and changed the country’s music industry in the process.
The birth of Japan’s nascent acid folk scene was rooted in the messy and invigorating political climate of the late 1960s. It is a story of Dadaists, communists, pharmacists and cult leaders, led by a young generation of upstart students, artists and dreamers hellbent on turning their world upside down.

Born on the campuses of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, and centred around newly formed independent label and left-wing stronghold URC, this uniquely Japanese form of folk expression provided an outlet for musicians who were tired of aping Western sounds and instead found ways to sing in Japanese and integrate traditional forms in new ways.

At the forefront of this movement was Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haroumi Hosono, a polymath innovator whose band Happy End released the first Japanese language rock album, and whose influence would go on to be felt across Japanese music for decades. Alongside, and informed by the Kansai scene’s Takashi Nishioka and Happy End collaborator Ken Narita, they experimented with cadences and accents of the Japanese language to open the door for others to experiment with their own forms of psychedelic folk too.

Some, like Nishioka, were more inspired by Dadaism than drugs, while others, like Kazuhisa Okubo, would ultimately find work as a chemist, having founded two further folk groups that flirted with varying levels of success. Obstinately uncommercial, relentlessly creative, the music featured on Time Capsule’s Nippon Acid Folk represents a broad church of influences.

Perhaps the wildest addition to this congregation however was Hiroki Tamaki, a classically-trained violinist and committed iconoclast, whose synth-prog odysseys hinted at his obsession with the divine. Subsumed by the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, he penned an album in praise of the infamous religious leader of which two superbly mind-bending tracks are featured on this compilation.

Charting the decade from 1970 to 1980 as the dreams of political and spiritual liberation seeded in the ‘60s turned to dust, Nippon Acid Folk surveys a little explored corner of Japanese music history, but one which ultimately laid the foundations for an independent music industry, launching the careers of Hosono and others in the process.

Nippon Acid Folk 1970-1980 is pressed on 12” vinyl and represents the start of Time Capsule’s deep dive into Japan’s rich history of folk and psychedelic soul music.

Dwell into The Outside Agency's mechanical mind - an enclosed sphere through which soundwaves and hard-hitting beats bend and deform to the automatic articulations of the machinery that is their 'Machine Visions' EP. Feel the tracks' grinding bass wrench open your inner-spirits and guide you to an elevated sense of mechanical completeness!

Now-Again Records presents catalog-wide reissues of Latin music propellant Joe Bataan’s legendary Ghetto Records. Next up in the series - Joseph “Candido” RodrÌguez - Candido was mentored by Tito Punete, and his debut features a fantastic mix of fiery Salsa, Latin Jazz and Sweet Latin Soul. Ghetto Records was Joe Bataan’s way to get over on “The Man” and out of the ‘hood, a bold move by an artist looking for independence and creative control in an industry that had exploited his talents and treated him like chattel. As Bataan puts it today, “Ghetto Records was part of my journey, a stepping stone to everything else that I’ve done. I learned enough that it enabled me to get out of the box with my thinking, it showed me how to deal with adversity.” Like many dreams and schemes born of the street, this one was audacious, perhaps even reckless to a fault. Hatched from desperation yet full of hope Ghetto Records came crashing down shortly after its inception. The seven albums in its discography languished out of print - until now. These are the definitive reissues of these albums, licensed from Joe Bataan, with his oversight and input into a 16 page oversize book by Pablo Yglesias that details Bataan’s larger-than-imagination life and his little Latin label that could.

'“Nobody Move!”, so says Philippe Doray and his Asociaux Associés (the Antisocial Associates)! Having dynamited the end of the 70s with two radical albums – Ramasse-Miettes Nucléaires in 1976 & Nouveaux Modes Industriels in 1978, both reissued by Souffle Continu – Doray still hadn’t finished singing. Throughout the next decade he began his Composant compositeur which would document the “second period”, as he calls it, of his Asociaux Associés.

The record includes new schizo-electro songs which make the most of his association with Laurence Garcette, who also plays all sorts of keyboards. A prolongation of the first period of the Asociaux Associés, the duo updates Doray’s poetry: in reaction to the current overcast atmosphere, here are some hallucinatory fantasies to the rhythm of an infernal circle dance (« Le petit géant ») or an ecstatic waltz (“Bombés fluo”) or even coded messages stuffed into bottles and thrown into space (“Secoue le flipeur”, “Choc d’amour”).

On the bonus CD there are further iconoclastic examples: rare recordings (unpublished or even “inaudible”) of the Asociaux Associés but also by Crash, a duo that Doray formed with Thierry Müller (Ilitch, Ruth). At the controls of their experiment- bending machine the musicians multiply the possibilities: peripheral rock, arias in orbit, broken swing, industrial mantras and other joyful falsities. Enough to make you lose your mind? No... as Philippe Doray promised: it is the “jackpot qui frissonne” (the shivering jackpot) which is there to excite.'

Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood und Tom Skinner aka The Smile kündigen heute ihr brandneues Album „Wall Of Eyes“ an, das am 26. Januar 2024 bei XL Recordings erscheinen wird. Zugleich veröffentlicht die Band den Titelsong des Albums samt Musikvideo, bei dem Paul Thomas Anderson Regie führte. Das neue Album, das zwischen Oxford und den Abbey Road Studios aufgenommen und von Sam Petts-Davies produziert sowie abgemischt wurde, enthält zudem Streicherarrangements des London Contemporary Orchestra.
Das neue Album „Wall Of Eyes“ von The Smile ist der Nachfolger des gefeierten Debütalbums „A Light For Attracting Attention“ aus dem Jahr 2022.

Belgian artist Jennifur is a bit of an enigma in today’s contemporary music climate. While most bend over backwards to satisfy the algorithm’s constant need for content, Jennifur (real name Hector Devriendt) has been quietly crafting spell-binding music that stands the test of both time and decreasing attention spans, blurring genre and emotion seamlessly through a sonic DNA that is diverse and colourful.

Having locked himself in his basement for eighteen months in order to produce the soundtrack for PS5 and XBOX ONE snowboarding game Shredders – which was later released by Jennifur himself under the title Nowhere, Now Here – the Ghent based artist is preparing the release of his next full length; Things Don’t Change Until They Do on Supreems’ new label Sweet Sun.

Tears-on-the-dancefloor aesthetics meet with polyphonic, nostalgia-inducing patterns, coming-of-age breakbeats and heart-string tugging classical ambient on an album that sounds completely unlike anything else you will hear this year.

Comes with a biographical interview insert telling the fascinating story behind Fantasy Train and the creation of their unique 1984 album for the first time.

File together with: Donnie & Joe Emerson - Dreamin' Wild and Jr. & His Soulettes - Psychodelic Sounds albums.

"From a southern small town this after school project is hard to describe other than there's nothing else like it. Teens exploring soul, funk and rock and this album is their interpretation of all three. Catchy tunes, plenty of effects and earnest vocals. Fantasy Train is one of the freshest sounds I've heard in many years of digging." Rich Haupt (Rockadelic).

"Cool teen rock meets DIY modern soul laden with psyched guitars, weird sci-fi effects, and alternate male/female vocals. There's also cheesy synth-wave realms and dreamy late night gospel overtones." Taro Miyasugi (Vinyl Anaconda).

"Fantasy Train is a unique, genre-bending album cooked up in the sweltering Southern heat that impresses me with a special kind of style and panache. It is an amazing venture - their sound is clearly rooted in the soul of the '60s and the funk of the '70s but flourishes even further with the added electro-swagger of the '80s, and there is a certain genius to its fluidity. I don't really believe in genres anyway. The band's wild imagination and their excellent musical use of a laser pistol made clear to me that this album was one of a kind." Sam Swig (Mystery Brew).

Vladislav Delay's complete "Hide Behind The Silence" series. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label Rajaton.

Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it never stops breathing. It’s filled with tiny particles, dancing. Everything can be explained on a molecular level, but since we’re not scientists – and even if you happen to be – it’s the natural world of perception that moves me.
Still air is very similar. A hot summer’s day with zero wind feels completely still. It’s the closest I have felt to complete stillness. Or for a more urban adaptation, imagine the same vibe inside a normal apartment. In those moments, revelations and mind- blowing experiences can be had with experiments in stillness.
Try this: Just sit down for a minute on a sunny day, making sure there’s enough natural light. Do absolutely nothing. Try not to breathe for a bit. (If you need a mental anchor, you can play Cage’s 4’33” in your head but nothing else.) Watch the tiny dots of dust dancing :..’ ̈.:; ́ ́*°.,’:,. ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈:,.’
The movement is crazy, but the feeling of stillness comes from witnessing how subtle it is. In (perceived) complete stillness, every act of microscopic mobility seems to speak volumes. Yet, it feels both reassuring and oddly threatening that the stillness is never complete. What if we would need absolute stillness? Or is it just enough that we can perceive something as such? Extremes attract, so for both water and air, extraordinary movement is equally fascinating. That is also a luxury item of sorts. For us to enjoy a very ”loud” body of water or air, we need to be safe, in enough control of the situation. So when you are, it’s worthwhile to pay attention and take it all in.
A rapid flowing free with extreme strength and just barely in control. Look at that water go! No still water on this one, only ”sparkling”. A windy day when birds seem surprised how hard it is to fly, but in the end they make it. Trees bend but don’t break. The wind shows you its movement but doesn’t hurt you. It feels friendly, like a big clumsy dog that doesn’t quite understand its size.
It’s beautiful to be a guest of the elements, but not at the mercy of them. A new kind of dialogue forms.

Q&A with Sasu Ripatti:

1) Tell us something about the EP series ”Hide Behind the Silence”, what’s the idea and what can we expect?

Exploration of inaction. Of many kinds. In arts and in personal life, or at bigger and more serious levels. Questioning myself as a human being as well as an artist. Acknowledging the growing activism all around, and the very clear need for it, and how it reflects my own inaction.
Musically speaking, after Rakka, Isoviha and Speed Demon, I finally found some relief, but more importantly lost the need to go musically ever more outward and intensive. I felt quite strongly certain periods/moods from the past and they made me revisit some musical ideas or states of mind I was exploring early on.
It’s about live moments being captured, not much premeditation or editing. More intuitive and raw, even though the end result (to me) feels and sounds quite introspective and calm. It’s not very ambitious. Momentary and reflective.

2) Your music doesn’t sound very silent. Does it come from somewhere behind the silence?

Oh, this time to me it sounds quite quiet and playing with space if not silence. I don’t know what’s actually behind silence, but I think silence is the source of everything. We just don’t understand it yet.

3) What kind of thoughts or experiences gave inspiration to this series?

Writing this in Nov ’22, it’s not a stretch to say the world has been really unwell. Sometimes, like Mika Vainio put it, the world eats you up. I feel a bit like that. And I try to hide in my studio and stay away from it all, but it’s getting harder by the day. I’ve been questioning myself and thinking if what us artists are doing is worth anything, and whether it’s just a selfish thing I’ve been doing for the past 25 years, running away from everything. I haven’t come to a conclusion yet.

4) Is it easy for you to be in silence, or around silence?

Absolutely. I not only hide behind silence but I also love silence. It’s only since I started going back to nature as a grown-up person that I sensed and was enveloped by silence, true silence. I have begun to appreciate it a lot. I think all the people should spend more time in silence.

All tracks composed and produced by Sasu Ripatti.
Artwork by Marc Hohmann, photography by Shinnosuke Yoshimori.
Mastering by Stephan Mathieu for Schwebung Mastering.
Vinyl cut by SST Brueggemann.
Publishing by WARP Music Ltd.

Sasu Ripatti's complete "Dancefloor Classics" series. Music for imaginary dancefloors, released on Ripatti's own label Rajaton.

”Look up, into the light” she said, while the camera shutter clicked. ”Like this? Does it look holy?” His neck felt stiff. Her reply: ”Yes, just like that. What do you mean holy? Like religious? ”No, more like trying to look very far, somewhere beyond what we can see.” ”Okay, stand still, I’m going to come close to you now. The light hits your face great.” click, click, click.
He noticed her fingernails. They were not polished. Natural. Even somewhat rugged, as if something wore out the fingers slightly. What had these hands held besides the camera? What made the edges of her fingernails drift off?
He thought it’s weird to look straight into the camera. The photographer had closed her left eye, the one not looking into the lens. Then it opened, she looked up, perusing the surroundings, then she closed her eye again, then looked up, closed, looking up, very quickly. It all seemed very professional. Maybe she calculated the light, making sure it’s close to perfect. ”What will these photos look like?” – the thought popped into his head briefly. It was liberating to think it wouldn’t matter.
”What’s that song playing?” he asked. ”Wait a sec, Ol’ Dirty Bastard?” she replied. ”Oh yeah, right. But the sample?” ”Hey, could you look up again, like that. No, lower.”
New directions: ”Look out from the window, turn left.” ”My left or yours?” ”Yours, I always try to think from the direction of my model.” How professional! This is a good shoot, so natural. Should I worry about how the photos look like? No, I don’t want to. His thoughts bounced around. What would the story be like? It’s a big newspaper, everyone will read it. Maybe someone drinks coffee and eats a stroopwafel while they do it. Will they place the waffle on top of the mug for a brief while, so that it gets hot and the syrup melts a little? Then it feels wet, and you can bend the cookie.
She broke his train of thought off midway through: ”Now turn right, but look left, and slightly up, but don’t turn your face right.” ”Umm, like this? Sounds like a set of pilates instructions.” she laughed ”You do pilates?” ”Yeah, it’s hard sometimes. Have you tried?” ”No”, she said. ”I’m not good for sports that are done in groups.” ”Yeah, but in pilates you can just be inside your mind, drowning in your private thoughts.”
”What are you thinking in pilates?” she asked, taking more photos. ”Well, mostly just which way is right. And which left.” click, click.

Q&A with Sasu Ripatti:

1) Tell us something about the EP series ”Dancefloor Classics”, what’s the idea and what can we expect?

I’ve been slowly writing these sort of dance music pieces and finally curated them together for a conceptual release. I like to create music for a dancefloor that exists only in my imagination and doesn’t try to suck up to the standardized reality.

2) Your vinyl format is 10” which is quite special (as opposed to LP / 12”). Why did you choose it?

It’s my favourite format, absolutely. The size is perfect, and you can make it sound really good @ 45 rpm. And you still can make great artwork.

3) You seem interested in sampling/repurposing, what does it mean to you as an artist to approach something already existing from a new angle? How does the source material inform you about the approach to take?

I guess i could flip it around and just say I’ve outgrown synths or electronic sounds to a great extend, and having gotten rid off all my synths already good while ago I’ve used samples as my main source material a lot. It’s obvious on this series that i’ve sampled existing music, but I also sample instruments and things in the studio and resample my own library that I have built over the years, it’s quite large. To me the end result matters, not so much how I get there. Once I have something on my keyboard and play around, it’s all an instrument, though with sampling other music it becomes a really interesting and complex one as you’re possibly playing rhythm, but also harmonic content and maybe hooks or whatever, all at once.
I never sample premeditadedly, like listening to records and looking for that mindblowing 3 sec part. I just throw the cards in the air and see what lands where, just full intuition and hopefully zero mind involved, playing tons of stuff, trying things, just recording hours of stuff. Then comes the interesting part to listen to hours of mostly crazy stuff and finding that mindblowing 3 sec part.

4) What is your relationship with the dancefloor (conceptually and/or in experiences / as a performer)?

Very complicated. I have never really felt comfortable on a dancefloor but have always wanted to. There’s something in club music, in theory, that really speaks to me. It has never really materialized for me – speaking mainly from a performer’s point of view who goes to check on a dancefloor for a moment after a concert. I never have DJ’d or felt much interest towards it. But again, I love the idea and concept of DJing. As well as producing music for imaginary DJs. Lately, as in the past 10+ years, I haven’t even performed in any sort of club spaces. So my relationship to the dancefloor is quite removed and reduced, but there’s quite a bit of passion and interest left.

All tracks composed and produced by Sasu Ripatti.
Artwork & photography by Marc Hohmann.
Mastering by Stephan Mathieu for Schwebung Mastering.
Vinyl cut by SST Brueggemann.
Publishing by WARP Music Ltd.