By: Anand Harsh

Play the new Dave Tipper EP, Lattice, for his fans and they'll wistfully recall the precise moment this or that track was placed perfectly within a recent set. Play it for a newcomer to the Tipper oeuvre, and they'll question whether or not the same person produced each of the songs. Such is the variety you get in these little bite-sized nuggets we've come to expect from the godfather of glitch.

It's his third 4-track EP in as many years—the most recent being, Flunked, released in January of this year, and the one before that, It's Like, coming out almost two years ago to the day in 2015. It's also the first peep we've heard from the legendary UK producer since he hosted the 4321 solar eclipse event in central Missouri back in August.

Opener and title track “Lattice” plunges the listener directly into a futuristic open-air market filled with exotic smells and even stranger sights. Warbling alien frequencies crash into the frame sending the drumbeat either scurrying off into the night, or searching desparately for a foothold to get back on track.

Tipper jumps feet first into the halftime game with “Scapula,” turning the genre on its head by giving it a ilght, glitchy, fun feel, where others tend to go dark, grimy, and rugged. What separates Dave's take from those of, say, a Tsuruda or Ivy Lab, is that there are so many divergent aesthetic choices happening all at once, and some even running counter to each other.

“Cubic Squeal,” is the most straightforward glitch-hop track on the EP, which is where all uses of the word “straightforward” cease to apply. There's what appears to be a send-up of the dungeon theme from the early Mario Brothers games amidst the cacophony of bass-born cannon blasts and some surgically precise scratching from Mr. Tipper.

Closing out the 4-track collection is a VIP of “Dreamsters” from 2014's Forward Escape. Taking the ambient ephemera that eventually accelerates into a driving sonic journey and giving it a boom-bap hip-hop feel, Dave Tipper gives fans one last totally different look before disappearing back into hiding with nary a goodbye, just the gift of another wild sonic adventure.

Catch Tipper at the Joy Theatre in New Orleans in early January for a two-night stand on the 6th and 7th, one date of which will feature the equally irreverent Danish producer Rumpistol. More details on those shows to be revealed in the coming weeks, we expect.