Ciccone, the sound of ‘Niwa’ is fully fleshed out.
Ripperton’s music has always had that organic feeling, the
sensation that, beyond the cold electronic sheen, there
was a human pushing the buttons beneath the android
exterior; here, that’s realised with more potency than
ever.
“Everybody is too into plug-ins and computers at the
moment, but for me, electronic music doesn’t just mean
electronica,” Ripperton says. “You can take a guitarist, or
percussionist, and then rework them into the computer.
That’s a different approach.
“For this album, I bought a lot of toys — percussion and
xylophones — and I was really trying to use something
that no-one else was. I go to the studio and have fun. I was
really excited about making something fresh,
communicating how I’m feeling right now, and I tried to
put that on the album, but it takes a lot of time!”
It’s an approach that has paid dividends. From the
sad-eyed, African high-life guitars and looped kid’s choir
of ‘The Sandbox’, to the Blade Runner tech chords,
xylophones, kick drums and gorgeous jazz pipes of guest
Christina Wheeler on centrepiece ‘At Peace’, it’s an album
as albums should be: a nuanced exploration of all
components of an artist’s musical character.
“I don’t know if it will surprise people, but in my opinion,
an album is something really personal. I don’t like it when
people make albums of only dancefloor tracks. You should
make it of what you are. I listen to so much different music
— at the moment, electronic stuff is kind of boring, in my
opinion.”
One of the most mysterious things about ‘Niwa’ is its title,
but as Ripperton explains, it has more earthly origins than
at first may appear, and gives the album a further
resonance.
“I was thinking of ways to make it all stick together, and
then I was doing some recordings in the park behind my
house, field recordings,” Raphaël recalls. “I have a big park
there, and it’s really nice because you have so many
different places in this garden. At one place there’s all the
trees, then the pond with the fish, then others with
fountains. In the end, I thought the album was like
different places in the same garden. A quiet place,
somewhere all the people are together, and it fitted
perfectly with my idea. I didn’t like the word garden, and
jardin in French is not so good, and then I was browsing
the internet, and I found the Japanese word, ‘Niwa’ and it
sounded great, like poetry. Everyone will remember that
word.”
Logical
The most surprising segment of ‘Niwa’ is the downbeat
discovery of ‘Know My Place’, which, with its spectral,
gauzy electronics, spliced vox, and crunching glitch
breaks, sounds like a cut from Thom Yorke’s solo album.
It’s a logical step for affirmed Radiohead fan Ripperton,
coming after his highly-rated, 2008 underground bootleg
remixes of that band’s ‘Nude’ and ‘Harrowdown Hill’, which
generated ripples of excitement across the techno scene,
everyone from Ellen Allien to Joris Voorn rinsing them out.
“The best remixes I have ever done are what I’ve done for
free, when I don’t have the stress, when I can do what I
want. The Radiohead one took me a long time. It was a
bootleg, and then Joris [Voorn] put it on his Balance
compilation, and the Radiohead guys asked me to clear
things with them, so it was cool.”
For the rest of the year, Ripperton has a series of fresh
releases lined up on his label Perspectiv, and tours of
Australia, the US and Europe to promote the album. If
there’s any justice, ‘Niwa’ will make the world wake up to
Switzerland’s extraordinary dance scene, although it
might be better if we get to keep Ripperton’s special sonics
all to ourselves…
www.djmag.com
053
DJ482.riperton_feature.indd 53 14/1/10 15:28:52
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