Interview: Luomo aka Vladislav Delay

Deux ans après la sortie de Paper Tigers, le finlandais, résidant à Berlin , nous propose son nouvel album Convivial. A l’occasion cette la sortie, Luomo aka Vladislav Delay (Sasu Ripatti de son vrai nom) nous a accordé une interview.

TheClubbing.com: Let’s begin with the most difficult question : could you describe your new album with three adjectives, except Convivial?
Luomo:
1/ festive
2/ joyful
3/ social

TheClubbing.com: There is a vocal guest on each track of Convivial. Could you introduce them?
Luomo:
1. Have You Ever, Cassy is a singer, producer and a great DJ from Berlin who has residence at Panorama Bar club.
2. Love You All, Sascha Ring from Berlin who you might know better as Apparat.
3. If I Can’t, Jake Shears is the singer from a NYC band Scissor Sisters.
4. Nothing Goes Away is a duet between a friend of mine from San Francisco, Sue-C who sings the main vocals, and long-time friend and collaborator from Finland Johanna Iivanainen who sings the amazing chorus vocals on this song.
5. Robert’s Reason, Robert Owens is a classic house singer and producer from Chicago, now living in London.
6. This is the only almost-instrumental song on the album. Slow Dying Places is featuring Johanna Livanainen from Finland. She’s amazing singer that I have worked with since the first Luomo album Vocalcity.
7. Sleep Tonight, also Johanna Livanainen.
8. Gets Along Fine, features a singer who has to hide under pseudonym Chubbs so he could sing on the album without major label freaking out and making it impossible. He’s from Australia.
9. Lonely Music Co. also Johanna Iivanainen. She comes from jazz music background and you can quite easily hear that in this song I think.

TheClubbing.com: Regarding that vocal orientation, some people say that you are reaching pop songs. Do you agree?
Luomo: In a way I have always made pop songs with Luomo but of course within time I have gotten maybe closer to what the word pop really means. For me personally, pop can mean quite wide range of things but that’s not always what other people think. Anyway, I really like pop music and like making it so I’m happy it comes through!

TheClubbing.com: You’ve got a lot of nicknames like Vladislav Delay, Sistol, Uusitalo, Luomo, The Dolls,… Has each one a meaning? Is it properly a question of style?
Luomo: There are no deeper meanings but each are representing an idea, mostly musical one. Like I said above I like making and listening to pop music but I do not like doing that all the time and actually get easily bored with only one type of music if it goes for too long, so I need variety and new refreshing changes every now and then. I also really enjoy the producer-aspect in making music and enjoy working on range of music. Thus the different projects, and names. It’d also be difficult and pointless in my opinion to release all music I make under one name, it’d just confuse and piss many people off who only like certain kind of music.

TheClubbing.com: What about your ambient/electronica projects? Is there a future?
Luomo: In a way that’s my first child and I will never get far away from her. There’s a new album slowly at works and it’s something I also try to bring further and look for new possibilities in.

TheClubbing.com: Like many many artists in electronic music, you made that album in Berlin. Why do you think everybody move there? Have this town an influence on your work?
Luomo: I made Convivial in Berlin but before finishing it I moved to Finland where I finished the album. Everybody moves to Berlin that’s for sure, and that was also a reason for me to move away, among other things.
I’m not so mass-popular-minded and don’t do the most-popular things like Idols TV and so living in Berlin begun taking a toll on me. It’s great city to visit and why not live if you are a DJ or young person and want to party a lot or check club music or in general be creative and not have to care so much about the rent etc. It’s still I think one of the greatest, and definitely cheapest cities in Europe to live in. I have a young child and I wanted to get out of the concrete city and move to nature with more space around us. For me the influence always comes from elsewhere than where I live. I travel and gather influences and then I come home and process that input, so at home I don’t really remain too open for more input but rather work on the stuff I have gathered elsewhere.

TheClubbing.com: Do you play some instruments or is it only machines?
Luomo: I play lots of drums and percussion, but beyond that it’s keyboards and machines.

TheClubbing.com: What about the live configuration of Luomo?
Luomo: It’s basically just remixing and doing a dub of existing material, having arrangement in multitrack where I can rearrange the song and also have separate elements in physical mixer with effects and just do what I enjoy most, play around with audio using electronics, having my own little King Tubby process on stage. I also might come with a VJ if that’s possible.

TheClubbing.com: I read somewhere that you had founded a company. Could you tell us a bit more?
Luomo: That must have been years ago when I tried that. The company still exists but I haven’t been involved in it since many years already. I wanted to try to get out of the whole music business side and make something else for living so I could make music totally free regarding business pressure. But it ended up me not having any time to make music in the end which is worse than having to think about money and music at the same time. I solved the problem by living cheaply.

TheClubbing.com: What is your position about the increasing of music downloading?
Luomo: It’s happening anyway so there’s no point in trying to swim against that current. It has definitely both good and bad sides and I guess it helps if we try to concentrate on the good sides. I personally worry the physical object being history soon with artwork and something you can break or give from hand to hand to someone, and live with. I really wonder how that will be in the future and what will change because of that.

TheClubbing.com: A word for the French and Belgian readers of TheClubbing.com?
Luomo: Hope to see you around somewhere when I’m playing. Enjoy.