INFO
The long awaited and highly-anticipated debut artist album from Switzerland’s Raphael Ripperton will be released in February 2010 on Joris Voorn and Edwin Oosterwal's Green label. Joris was so impressed when he first heard Niwa that he signed it immediately, and anyone who knows the exacting standards of quality that Joris sets for himself and his artists, this was an exceptional move. Then again, this is an exceptional debut!

Known for his first-class quality releases on countless respected labels such as Ovum, Rekids, Dessous and his own imprint Perspectiv, Ripperton has established himself as one of the most highly regarded and exciting artists around. Now with Niwa, he demands your full attention, nothing less will do. The time Ripperton has invested in the production of his debut album, the growth process of each and every idea, is deeply engraved in each of his compositions. Two years in the making, every season of the year appears to synthesize it’s own particular sound. Each song represents a period of Ripperton’s life coming together as a diverse yet harmonic whole.

Raphael Ripperton is a delicate kind of guy. A lot of the sounds out there don’t move him, and for him, music doesn’t have to be reinvented to be authentic. To Ripperton originality is more about a certain signature, a unique gesture indicating that something exciting and different is going on inside the music. It’s about a small shift in consciousness, opening up one’s mind to unfamiliar views on new symmetries and hidden patterns. Ripperton is a truly reflective artist. None of his tracks are cobbled together in one go. Nothing is rushed. It isn’t a race. Not if one’s goal is to reach a point of completeness, to create a consistent expression of one’s personality with your debut album.

In Japanese Niwa means garden. The concept of what an album should be is really taken seriously here. With Niwa what you open your ears and emotions to isn’t just another loose bundle of tracks. All the single stories, element by element, are constantly fusing together into a greater whole. This is Ripperton’s world. He draws on all the influences that have journeyed with him as a passionate musician on life’s long and winding road. Influences far beyond dark booming warehouse parties abound, and are just as likely to conjure up vivid images of dewy Lausanne sunsets. Folk tinged downbeat experiments peacefully co-exist with delicious jazz blueprints and sublime ambient soundscapes, sitting in harmony with deeply hypnotic house grooves.

The opening track, A Simple Thing, with its delicate mood immediately hints at the joys that lie within this album. An accordion, gentle stripped down beats, deep dub bass and the longing beauty of a wordless song. At Peace, featuring the achingly sensual vocals of Christina Wheeler, unfolds from this beginning as a bittersweet lament. It is not until Ecotone emerges with an energetic emotive Detroit bassline that the dancefloor is hinted at. The album’s mesmerising exotic journey has only just begun as Ripperton’s garden blossoms into all kinds of colours and shapes. The Sandbox is arranged around the loped refrain of an African children’s choir and features a quirky squeaky rhythm pattern that, combined with delicately picked guitar motifs hint at a vision for future electronic folk music.

Something is different can you feel it? Something is missing? Where is the soul now?

An astonishing jacking bassline erupts into Echocity, before diving deep into the downtempo looping angelic reprise of L’Ardo with its lush acoustic beauty. Farro unwinds into a deeply hypnotic melodic synth exploration of joyous simplicity, as Ripperton prepares to conjure up ghosts in the machines with the dislocated head twisting radio broadcast that is I Know My Place, followed by A Simple Interlude which returns to the source of the album’s opening theme as the wheel turns ever revolving and soothing the soul. This is only a temporary lull as Des Promesses De Couleurs lifts the mood to a hip swaying groove and Leonor’s Lanugo explores deeper grooves, building towards the intensely uplifting emotive piano motifs of Random Violence, before dropping back to A Train To Nowhere and it’s Detroit dub club sway, which heralds the return of Christine Wheeler for the thoughtful finale of Solastalgia. That, ladies and gentleman is quite a journey!

Mere words cannot do justice to the beauty of music. This is an album that begs to be returned to over and over and over again. It is a creation of timeless ageless beauty. Ripperton’s Niwa is the first exceptional album of 2010.