Eliot Lipp

For Eliot Lipp, stepping into The Outside is an exercise of restraint, in a good way. Like all the roaming U.S. producer’s releases, his latest is one that embraces simplicity and straightforwardness, dropping deliberately minimal electro funk peppered with vintage tones and murky audio drones. However, for Lipp, simple does not equal boring, nor has it ever. Since Prefuse 73 took him under his wing a few years back, Lipp has proved to have a knack for stripping his electronics to the bare essentials while still sucking you in with synth-driven melodies and shifting grooves. It’s an approach that’s worked before and it’s one that works again on The Outside, an uncluttered affair that shows just as much love for the Factory releases of old as for modern break beats and IDM. And while the record by no means reinvents any wheels, it is a solid listen, as well as one of Lipp’s stronger pieces of work.