Eliot Lipp Tacoma Mockingbird

• Words: Peter Nicholson
• Label: Hefty
• XLR8R Rating: /10

So much instrumental hip hop just goes up in smoke - not so with Eliot Lipp‘s second album. Tacoma Mockingbird has beats that stick to the ribs, crispy fried snares and bass drum booms thick like gravy, and it has melodies that twine in the mind, uncoiling analog tendrils that will tickle days after the last spin. Lipp is one of the few producers who can write keyboard lines with hooks as huge as any sample - check the squirming lead of "Rap Tight" (which also features an excellent stuttered breakdown) or the tension between the pop-locking synths and their three-note backing figure on "Sex Tapes." Even when Lipp lifts a beat ("Vallejo" is a dead ringer for Massive Attack‘s "Five Man Army" - who probably stole it from someone else) he makes it his own with a heady electro sheen that doesn‘t lose it‘s luster, even after repeated listens.