Dixon Hill is a producer from Las Vegas who is only a couple years into his career of releasing music. In that short time, though, he’s hit the ground running, making his biggest splash so far in 2019, when he released Actus Reus with Guilty Simpson in 2019. Now he returns to a beat series he started in 2018 with Holodeck Beats: Program 3.

It’s funny how adjusting expectations going into a listening experience can affect your enjoyment of the project. By putting this out with a title that makes this look like it’s another beat tape to just through on the pile, Dixon Hill will surprise you with the quality of the music when you actually give it a fair shake. Hill is giving you plenty of head-nodding goodness, but he’s also going deeper than that. For one, this project is really halfway between being a beat tape and being a full-length instrumental album, with the majority of the tracks falling between two and three minutes and feeling pretty developed and memorable as stand alone songs. More than that, Hill is also working to capture feelings of isolation as he processes the weird time we are living through, and he’s doing that by incorporating a lot of sci-fi elements as well. There are times when the album is more contemplative and gets into more of a downtempo style, something that you can really get lost in your own head listening to, but then there are other times when Hill gets into his boom bap bag of tricks and delivers some funky beats that really slap – the kind that will make you want to turn the volume up and bob your neck along to the music. Any way you slice it, Hill will probably catch you off guard at least once in the course of this album with his versatility and maturity as a producer.

Holodeck Beats: Program 3 might not seem like much on paper, but Dixon Hill delivers the goods on this instrumental project. He gives you some soulful head nodders, some eerie and introspective downtempo, and he does it all with a high level of musicianship that continues to reward with repeat listens.