First you notice what's missing: gone are the gently echoing dubscapes, the shivering multi-tracked female vocals, the heartsore melodies, the insectile arrangements, the billowing evocations of desire. Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti's Luomo is nominally his "house" project (as distinct from excursions into stripped-back dub-techno or fractured ambience) but to date it has consistently flirted with an idea of house-- as feminine, gentle, lovelorn, ostentatiously emotive-- quite distinct from the often quite blunt realities of the genre. Plus, then, is Ripatti's first album of house qua house: specifically the cooler, big-room sound of tech-house circa 2006, equal parts Michael Mayer and Carl Craig.
If Luomo's previous work often could feel like the sound of the "body speaking" (to steal the title of one of his best tracks), the colder and harder surfaces of Plus are positioned between the body and the dancefloor, less the sound of movement than the sounds that make you move. Song takes a backseat to groove: while most of the tracks here feature gentle "Computer Love"-style male vocals (courtesy of the Chicago Boys), they are less the music's emotional center than a framework around which Ripatti can weave his typically intricate, hypnotic arrangements. Only on the fragile, trebly new wave of "Form in Void" and the seductive schaffel of "Immaculate Motive" does Ripatti gesture toward the glittering disco-pop of his prior work.
This feels like a deliberate aesthetic shift. Previously, many of Luomo's finest tracks featured late-blooming hooks that would carry the tune's second half in euphoric or melancholy new directions. By contrast, the best moments on Plus tend to turn inward, homing in on the beat until its urgency is almost too close to your ears. The effect can be like sitting in the front row at the cinema, the peripheral details of melodic color and vocals overwhelmed by the abstract throb of the hyper-percussive, multi-tiered groove. In particular, the massive climaxes of "How You Look" and especially "Make My Day" (by some distance the album's finest moment) feel designed to burn out your senses with an overload of physical intensity.
These tracks stand and fall on their own robust physicality: "Happy Strong" features an inane vocal hook and almost no melody to speak of, but its immense, banging groove (all slamming snares and delectable hand-clap counter-rhythms) makes it an album highlight. Only on "Good Stuff" does Ripatti's new aesthetic veer off course entirely, spending nine minutes trying but failing to achieve lift-off through chattering Chicago-house revivalism. Here, the groove isn't compelling enough to distract from the perfunctory song it props up.
If Plus ultimately is only the fourth-best Luomo album (after 2008's Convivial and certainly Ripatti's peerless first two albums under the moniker), it's because maintaining that level of intensity across entire tracks, let alone a whole album, is near impossible, while the moments in between the peaks no longer can coast on the singularity of the producer's sound. The less-exciting stretches on previous albums at least might have boasted a bruised-sounding bassline or delicately mutated vocal harmonies to establish a sense of unity with the climaxes. On Plus, the periods in between the climaxes can slip more easily into the category of fine-- but rather less-distinct-- German-sounding tech-house.
The importance of this criticism depends on how invested you are in house as dancefloor music first and foremost: Ripatti's music demands to be judged purely on the terms of the genre it inhabits, and the way that genre interacts with the bodies of dancers. If you come looking for house with an obvious point of difference, this decision seems puzzling, but if you're prepared to forget the name "Luomo" and simply lose yourself in the groove, then Plus is as involving and engaging as any dance music you'll hear this year.
