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.

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.