Eliot Lipp
LOS ANGELES, CA It rains for about half the year in Eliot’s hometown, Tacoma, Washington. Los Angeles is lucky if it gets a tenth of that. With friends and family on his mind, Eliot recorded during the blazing Los Angeles summer. Laying down a bedrock of notorious breakbeats under his signature Sequential Circuits and Korg MS-20 leads, Eliot has created an impeccable beat record that also serves as an autobiographical chronicle of love, longing and a soulful testament to the love for his hometown. Eliot’s instrumentals pour forth more emotion than most modern-day crooners, and his beats are on par with today’s best producers. Listening to his record automatically transports you to a crowded California freeway, with the wheels pointed north. It begins with dry desert leanings, and before long the rain starts to drip on the windshield, giving way to a full on finger-snapping downpour.
As someone whose creativity is directly aligned with his environment, the California climate proved a fickle muse for Eliot. “Tacoma just rains all year round,” he said. But a blistering summer alone in his apartment enabled him to see his home in a different light. Tacoma took on new meanings, as the attitudes of a small working-class city slammed up against the expensive ennui of Los Angeles. With images of home tucked into the back of his mind, the album took on a life of its own.
He moved to Los Angeles in 2004 and brought the cats and dogs with him. A usually barren city, the winter of 2005 would go down in history as one of the wettest winters on record, helping to bridge memories of Tacoma with his new experiences in LA. Eliot hunkered himself down in the studio and even when it was time to rest, he cuddled up to a temporary bed made of bubble wrap and cardboard that once housed his gear. “But it doesn’t feel like a sob story,” Eliot jokes. “I moved here to do music full time and I knew I just had to do it, make it work.” New Year’s Eve he resolved to quit his coffeehouse job, devoting himself full-time to music. Already an energetic self-promoter and disciplined producer, Eliot wanted to act on his day job daydreaming.
“For me, Los Angeles is a temporary place. This is where I am physically, but emotionally, my mind isn’t here,” he says of his current home. He sees LA as a place of opportunity, and his previous homes of Chicago and Tacoma were bubbles. “I didn’t want to get trapped in a local scene with a false sense of popularity.” The irony is that Eliot never received recognition in Chicago until he moved away. “Now they’re willing to take me seriously, because I’m not always around.”
Eliot previously spent three years in Chicago, where he cut his teeth in the club scene and was schooled in electronic music. Diving headlong into the culture, he started work on a record. He was fortunate enough to get his material into the hands of Scott Herren, also known as Prefuse 73 (Warp Records) and Savath+Savalas (Hefty Records). Scott flipped for it and it was pressed verbatim on the Eastern Developments label in November of 2004. Prior to its official release, Eliot was selling it over eBay and pushing it on kids after small club dates. Recorded in his tiny Chicago apartment while Eliot was still searching for his musical identity, the eponymous LP was his first step toward what would become his signature sound on Tacoma Mockingbird.
The music has elements of electro, soul, disco, funk, hip-hop and a myriad of other influences. “The lead single, ‘Rap Tight,’ is like a rock song,” says Eliot. “I wrote the first half really quickly, in about half an hour. Then I went back to it, adding the electro beat so there’s a lot more going on.”
“The People” has a nice bounce to it, and the beat on “Spit Rap” is incredible. The drums fill the room, opening up with a nasty ‘70s snare before boiling over into synth madness. Eliot covers a lot of ground while sticking to the same atmosphere, which is nice. The record rewards the listener with new sounds each time, creating a deep, fulfilling experience. Eliot wanted to create a record that sounds great in the car, in the home, in headphones and blasting over the PA.
His search for new sounds ultimately led him to old ones, with familiar favorites of the hip-hop world. “I’m part of the younger generation, meaning I don’t dig for breaks,” he says. “So many producers have already done the work, and there’s still plenty of life left in these breaks.” Instead of spending hours sifting through record stacks with dusty fingers and cramped knees, Eliot chose some of the most well-known breaks around. His challenge was to bring them new life and context. “I wanted to get rid of the connotations associated with each sample.” Adding in layers of synth and the occasional MPC sample stab, Eliot created his own sound. Very few of the synthesizer lines were sequenced, as Eliot played each piece live. The resulting unique sound blends live energy with soulful breaks
