Mush Records use a line in their press sheet that continued to resonate with me as I listened to Eliot Lipp's Mush label debut, "The Outside". They claim it's for "listeners who remember a time when electronic music had a little dirt under its fingernails", and I have to say, in between the full blown, candy-glossed movement of new wave in the 80s, and through the darker pre-millenium IDM years, there emerged a new sound in electronic music, increasingly more influenced by hip-hop with each new year, that continued to evolve after the 2k let-down. You'll feel that in this music. I say "let down" because for all its hype, 2k was a relatively yawn-inducing event, and because of that, everyone had this "my God we're still alive, so now what?" moment. Not that anyone expected the planet to implode, but they expected something, and a lot of electronic musicians picked up on that sense of new possibilities. Out of everyone's pre-2k tensions still waiting for something to drop, came a brighter attitude, and that's around the same time IDM (arguably) began its evolution into glitch. Eliot Lipp picks up cues from the glitched out, gritty and slightly distorted IDM style of the 90s, the clean scintillations of glitch in the early 2k's (to present) and dials up the 80s analog edge of each while really experimenting with the core of what makes hip-hop rhythms so damn good. Call it glitch hop, click hop, blip hop, downbreaks, break hop or just plain old electronic music. If you're really a pioneer you may just call it really nice music. The 80s vibe isn't quite as strong as in some of Eliot's previous work, and like all experimental studies, some of these tests don't really produce the most viable results. For a good example of Eliot Lipp's ability to enforce full nod compliance, check out "The Outside", "Baby Tank" or "The Area", which starts with a simple guitar loop that's balanced out by squelchy synths, only to be taken off-balance a moment later by piano, before a really nice (almost distortedly steel drum-like) synth melody guides it all back into symbiosis. If you're into the mid-tempo, minimal sounds coming out on Germany's Compost Records (among others), give "Beyond The City" a spin and you'll fall in love. It demonstrates what an unbelievable post-80s-full-on-80s house groove should sound like. The spirits distilled by Lipp's 30-year blend produce a collection of songs that sometimes lumber along at factory default pace, but in their finest form, these rhythms and melodies just jump out of the stereo and smack your brain into fully connected, nod compliance. - Properly Chilled