(A Patreon Request from Omskbird)
Despite it soon dominated by *those* basslines, there's a reason why nu-skool breaks was briefly considered among the cutting-edge tuneage in electronic music: producers were eschewing traditional standbys like sampling and bigging-up the beats in favour of cribbing technical innovations from the IDM camps. Micro edits! Digital scratching! Glitchin' that shit up! Of course, by the time the nu-skoolers had gotten their mitts on these toys, the IDM world had long moved on, but it's not like the IDM and breaks scenes would ever cross-pollinate again. (oh hi, Venetian Snares)
Among those early innovators was Dave Tipper, a nu-skool hero for the headier heads (and a glitch-hop favourite when nu-skool became old-n-busted school). He never achieved the same level of commercial fame as other players in this particular scene (Rennie Pilgrim, Adam Freeland, that attention whore BT, who only dabbled in nu-skool but somehow took almost all the glory... *ahem*), but that's how his followers like it. Tipper is their guy, making music for their brain matter. Sure, it's nice you can find him headlining festival stages and all, but he's playing his music for their DMT trip. Why yes, I've had this conversation at the Shambhala Music Festival, why do you ask?
After a couple singles sticking to conventional breaks of the '90s, (big beat, acid crunch, trip-hop), his Twister record marked a sudden change in how his sound would carry forward. The Critical Path is the debut album that followed, and offers ample amounts of that nu-fangled take on the broken-beat. No samples of obscure funk, every piece of rhythm an original construct. Except maybe opener Seldom Vile, in that it at times reminds me of Aphex Twin's Acrid Avid Jam Shred. Hey, I told you nu-skool were aping things IDM had done half a decade prior.
At eleven tracks long, Tipper gets plenty of room to show off all the fancy nu-gimmicks in his computer arsenal, more than half the tracks varied examples of what breaks of the future might evolve into (before the 'tear-out' guys sullied it). This being the year 2000, he gets in a couple trip-hop cuts too, including Zero 7 favourite Sophie Barker on vocals. And what would a breaks album of that period be without a little Hybrid borrowing, a few tunes working in orchestral swells as well.
And the music itself? Well, if you like Phase 1 nu-skool, you probably already have this. It took me a little to get warmed to it myself, and there are portions where Tipper comes down with BT-itis, over-indulging the effects to ludicrous extremes (oh God, are they ever ridiculous in Last Informer - impossible to pay attention to Ms. Barker's lyrics with that much nonsense going on in the background). Overall, I was more impressed by Tipper's sound design than his songcraft, but so long as tunes like Twister, Sort Code, and Supersport have me imagining blistering down hyper-sonic race tracks through ancient temples and lunar colonies, mission accomplished, I say.
