Vocalcity
Vocalcity is an album by Finnish electronic music producer Sasu Ripatti, better known as Vladislav Delay, and the first to be released under his stage name Luomo. It was released on 23 May 2000 on Force Tracks, and was reissued in 2005 on Ripatti's label Huume. In contrast to Ripatti's earlier work, "Vocalcity" features a more uptempo deep house sound. The album has been described by critics as an influential release in the subgenre microhouse, which emphasized the minimal elements of house music. Critical reception. AllMusic reviewer Jason Birchmeier stated that "Vocalcity" "offers a powerful statement of  purpose: glitch can indeed be funky and soulful without forsaking any of its forward-looking clicks + cuts aesthetic," and called it "the sort of album you can safely recommend to anyone." Writing for "Pitchfork" in 2005, Philip Sherburne praised the music's expansiveness and Luomo's influence in "seduc[ing] the tinkerers away from their mouse pads and back to the land of goosebumps and sex," stating that "what you hear now, after the demise of clicks + cuts, aren't the pinpricks but the enormous, inflated sounds of everything else—bass, pads, and of course those vocals." "Vocalcity" was  named the 13th best album of the 2000s by "Resident Advisor", which called Luomo "arguably the first artist to successfully meld next-level production techniques with a rich, emotionally-charged soul," and stated that the album "set the tone for a decade that would see the conservative boundaries of what we once knew as house transformed beyond all recognition." "The A.V. Club" included "Vocalcity" in its list of the best electronic music of the 2000s, commenting that "warm, enveloping, and riddled with doubt, the debut of Luomo remains one of the decade's most audacious mergers. Deep-house beats and  (especially) bass merged with glitch-techno methodology and dub production technique." Track listing. All tracks are written by Sasu Ripatti. Personnel. Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.