L.A. producer Thavius Beck is back with Dialogue, a new set of dissonances and noise experiments. Oddly, it comes out in the UK and Europe next week (October 5) via Big Dada; however, Mush Records does not have a domestic release date yet. I’ll let you know when that changes.

(October 29 update: The U.S. release date for CD/vinyl is January 26, 2010. However, it is already available on iTunes and other digital retailers.)

In the meantime, here’s some insight from the Big Dada website:

Beck spent 2007 contributing production work on Saul Williams’ Niggy Tardust full-length with Trent Reznor. In 2008, he entered the studio with new LA resident K-The-I???, producing K’s entire full-length Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow. …

Between studio sessions, Beck was taking to the road, traveling Europe and the United States as both artist and DJ. His superb live hip-hop beat construction has earned him much recognition among the electronic music community, eventually leading to sponsorships from M-Audio and Ableton, the creators of ubiquitous beat software, Live. Beck’s relationship with Live has grown to the point that his tour stops often include him booking Ableton Live instructional workshops in many of the cities he stops in.

In late 2008, Beck wrapped up recording his latest solo full-length, titled Dialogue. Unlike previous efforts, which have featured appearances from Saul Williams, Cedric Bixler-Zavala (The Mars Volta), Subtitle, and many more, the only voice on Dialogue is Beck’s own. Across fifteen tracks, including two instrumentals, Thavius cleverly critiques many of America’s ills with a dry, satirical wit that never falls into preachiness. “I think an MC should be able to draw on their life experiences and translate them into meaningful songs, maybe even grow a bit after reflecting on it during the song writing process. The writing and recording of Dialogue was a very therapeutic process for me for those very reasons: I took what I was going through in my life and put it on paper; I released my demons and let them dance over my beats.”

Sonically, the album reaches new heights for Beck. Taking months to mix, Dialogue is Beck’s biggest sounding album to date. Every track bleeds immediacy with warm bass kicks and aggressive highs that sound something like if the Bomb Squad had called Miami home. On his production influences, Beck notes: “I really like prog-rock, weird jazz/rock fusion hybrids, heavy metal, industrial stuff, etc., but I also like soul and funk, older hip hop, grime, some roots reggae. There was an earlier period when I was really influenced by drum-n-bass, and the more pretentiously named Intelligent Dance Music.”

For fans of iconoclastic music of any stripe, Thavius Beck presents Dialogue, and proves that the only musical boundaries he sees are ones he has already left behind.

Here’s the track listing:

• 1. “Intro/Cracking The Shell”
• 2. “Away”
• 3. “Go!”
• 4. “Money”
• 5. “Violence”
• 6. “Burn”
• 7. “And The Beat Goes On”
• 8. “Painful”
• 9. “Hardcore”
• 10. “IDC”
• 11. “Sheepish”
• 12. “Transmission”
• 13. “Sometimes”
• 14. “Pressure”
• 15. “4 Part 2″

Mush Records, one of my favorite experimental labels, celebrated its tenth anniversary last year. (Its first release was Boom Bip’s The Low End Sequence EP). To mark the occasion, it recruited Los Angeles producer Thavius Beck, whose track record includes acclaimed projects such as Saul Williams’ Niggy Tardust! affair and K-The-I???’s recent Yesterday, Today and Forever. Beck created a two “disc” mix of tracks from the label’s catalog for your downloading pleasure.

Download: Ten Years of Mush Records

On October 30, Mush Records will release K-The-I???’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, an album completely produced by L.A. beat vet Thavius Beck.

“After the man known as Kiki relocated from Cambridge to LA in ’07, after 2 months of sweating in a hot ass room at the Mush house in the dead of summer, after another 2 months of waiting for verses from High Priest (aka Hprizm) and Big Jus (and after only getting one of them… but thats a story for another blog), the hard work has paid off,” writes Thavius Beck in a MySpace post.

The elliptically-named K-The-I??? is a rapper of protean strength, and given to broken poetry that can be both powerfully moving and frustratingly cryptic. His 2006 debut, Broken Love Letter, drew respectable reviews and fans in like-minded avant-garde rappers, many of whom appear on Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. They include High Priest, Busdriver, Mestizo and Subtitle. Meanwhile, Thavius Beck, formerly known as Adlib and one-half of Lab Waste (along with Subtitle), has benefited from increased exposure for his work on Saul Williams’ acclaimed The Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust!

“Me and Thavius worked real hard on this record and put all are [sic] time, blood, sweat and tears into making this record sound fresh, brand new and creatively original,” writes K-The-I??? on his MySpace page.

The track listing for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is below.

• 1. “400 on the BPM”
• 2. “Before the Session”
• 3. “Trading Places” (feat. Nocando)
• 4. “Decisions”
• 5. “Cell-Shaded/Daydreams/Nightmares”
• 6. “Marathon Man” (feat. Thavius Beck)
• 7. “Let’s Make Moves” (feat. Vyle)
• 8. “Lead the Floor”
• 9. “Stylin’” (feat. Subtitle)
• 10. “Never Heard It Done Like This” (feat. High Priest)
• 11. “Just Listen”
• 12. “Sabbath Faster” (feat. Busdriver)
• 13. “Finger Painting”
• 14. “Man or Machine” (feat. Mestizo)

www.myspace.com/kthei

Arizona-bred, Brooklyn-based beatmaker Eliot Lipp drops his third album, The Outside, via Mush Records on April 8. The album, his third, may be his best to date. It finds him adding deeper and more complex electronic melodies to his hip-hop-inflected beats, resulting in instrumental synth suites reminiscent of 80s electro classics such as Paul Hardcastle’s “Rain Forest.”

“Eliot Lipp continues his impressive retooling of analog infused electro-funk with his latest full-length, The Outside, his first for Mush Records,” reads a press release. “Techno and hip-hop in their earliest, formative stages have inspired Eliot throughout his career, and form the common thread running through the album.”

So there you have it. Check out the new Eliot Lipp album when it drops next month, and see him perform if he happens to hit your town next month. The track listing and the tour itinerary are below.

• 1. “The Outside”
• 2. “Opening Ceremony”
• 3. “The Area”
• 4. “Best Friends”
• 5. “Baby Tank”
• 6. “Beyond the City”
• 7. “See What It’s About”
• 8. “The Meaning”
• 9. “The Interlude”
• 10. “7 Mile Tunnel”
• 11. “The Machine and the Wind”
• 12. “It’s Time to Leave”

Here’s the tour dates:

• 3/20: Crown Room, Portland, OR
• 3/28: Northeast Kingdom, Brooklyn, NY
• 4/02: The Pour House, Charleston, SC
• 4/03: Georgia Theatre, Athens, GA
• 4/04: Zydeco, Birmingham, AL
• 4/05: Knitting Factory, New York, NY
• 4/07: Soapbox, Willmington, NC
• 4/08: Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC
• 4/09: The Mix One 6, Roanoke, VA
• 4/10: 8×10, Baltimore, MD
• 4/12: Mr. Smalls Theatre, Millvale, PA
• 4/13: Pearl Street Club Room, North Hampton, MA
• 4/14: Higher Ground, Burlington, VT
• 4/15: Paradise, Boston, MA
• 4/19: Park West, Chicago, IL
• 4/24: Majestic Theatre, Madison, WI
• 4/25: Redstone Room, Davenport, IA

www.myspace.com/eliotlipp
www.eliotlipp.blogspot.com