Having revelled in Tipper’s 2010 release, Broken Soul Jamboree, I was more than looking forward to this new effort. Four years is a long gap by Dave Tipper’s standards, but last year’s open heart surgery has evidently had an impact on his output; here’s hoping he’s well on the way to recovery.

Forward Escape continues Tipper’s journey into downtempo terrains, although the album sits between the aforementioned Broken Soul Jamboree and recent releases: Puzzle Dust, Shatter Box and Dusty Bubble Box (a collective of EPs made available to help pay his medical costs).

Those glitch-hop releases were more dancefloor oriented, with deep, gurgling bass lines and a cacophony of bubbling synth leads. A similar style resides on Forward Escape, but the tempo is slower; its fizzing energy decelerated by clippity clop percussion and languid hip hop beats.

Again, Tipper comes across as a master of his art; the complex arrangements unfold with breath-taking clarity, while the sound design is beautifully crisp and clear - this is a headphone hound’s wet dream. Portal Spillage opens to wondrous effect, with trickling water dispersed by bruising horns and mangled electro slivers, unfolding twinkling melodies, shrill wobbling bass and chafing sound samples.

Dreamsters fleshes out a similar sound palette with a stronger groove, lush synths and a more constant beat, assaulted by a myriad of interconnecting glitch tones.

It would be fair to say that Tipper can’t resist showing off his sound design skills at times, a few too many tracks on Forward Escape slip into self-indulgence. Albeit luxuriously presented, tracks such as Homage Sliders, Grabbers Holders, Life Raft for A Death Tripe and Reverse Dross Manoeuver lack gravity, with sounds flying off in all directions there’s nothing to bridge the melodic counterpoints. Inhabiting its own universe, the results are too excitable to file under mood music, yet too entangled and laid back to move limbs to.

However, Tipper is always able to provoke and surprise, hence the dark, filmic The Bedraggling, with its ominous piano and haunting industrial percussive ambience. The Re-Up is a stunner, with its beautifully layered carpet of interweaving tones; when the beat comes in it’s like the emotion being released from a balloonful of ideas.

It’s true that I would have liked to have heard some stronger hooks and melodies on Forward Escape, and strange as though it may sound - considering its explorative nature, Tipper’s choice of sounds is somewhat reductionist, but as an exercise in experimental electronic music, Forward Escape is peerless in its uniqueness, and a marvellously cerebral listen.