asu Ripatti is an insanely prolific producer—but, as if releasing a steady stream of material as both Luomo and Vladislav Delay while running the increasingly prolific Huume Recordings weren’t enough to occupy his time, Ripatti has gone and resurrected his lesser Uusitalo alias and recorded a surprisingly excellent album. Taking inspiration from a 1940’s literary group in which Ripatti’s grandmother played a key role, Tulenkantaja may lack the distinct identity of his primary pseudonyms, but it manages to strike an intriguing balance between Luomo’s catwalk-ready grooves and the dubby soundscapes of Ripatti’s work as Vladislav Delay.

Announcing itself with tentative synthesizers, “Paskaa Musaa” opens the album, eventually coalescing into a tangle of driving rhythms and insistent melodies. With minimal beats vying for attention as an impossibly thick bass line dominates the mix, the track retains the chaotic looseness that typifies the best Delay tracks, but Ripatti reins it in, forcing the unstable arrangement into a defined—though still flexible—structure. The driving pulse of “Odottava Peto” reveals Tulenkantaja’s dance floor aspirations, however. With a wobbly martial thump, devastatingly deep bass, and ominous clouds of noise coming together to create the familiar ebb and flow of a finely tuned techno slow-burner, this track makes it obvious that Uusitalo is a conscientiously more funky persona than Luomo. Where the latter is more often concerned with the alien over-emotiveness of deep house, Uusitalo actually brings the jams, encouraging people to move their bodies rather than merely pose.

The record isn’t without its flaws: tracks like “Kalajuttuja” and “Nokonnen Päiväunilla” are aimless ambient wanderings, but the album’s highs more than compensate for these moments of stasis. “Lumimies” showcases a gloriously simple electro beat and keeps the rhythm flowing, inserting neat packages of keyboards and vocal samples into the spaces between the beat, tastefully deploying delay and reverb in controlled bursts rather than letting ambience roam freely across the track. “Uuta Verta Hangella” veers into Luomo territory, again dispensing with ambience in favor of a colder and more restrained atmosphere, and the title cut even resembles a darker, more minimal “Around the World.”

Nothing compares to the late album highlight “Misut Irti / Huutaa,” though. With its billowy clouds of ambience, repetitive Kraftwerk synths, and a gleefully jumpy beat, the track is a standout in Ripatti’s extensive catalogue. While there may be some vocoder lurking in the mix, you can’t fault a man with such a long history of innovation and experimentation for an innocent flirtation with the mainstream. Its arpeggiated patterns and intoxicating dub textures make for eight and a half minutes of bliss, and the candy coated bell tones and drifts of reverb that bring the track to a leisurely close lead beautifully into the album’s final moments.

With Tulenkantaja, Ripatti has established Uusitalo as an equal alongside his two aliases. Mapping out every combination of dub and techno and exploring each possibility to its logical end, the album is of a piece with his other releases and yet something entirely new at the same time. Essential listening for fans of his work, but an even better starting point for the uninitiated.