The turntable soul group Belleruche released their fourth and latest album Rollerchain on Tru Thoughts last week.

We’re offering Beatnik’s supporters a chance to win two tickets to their show at Scala in London on 31 May. Just answer a simple question:

What song was the lead single to Belleruche’s third album 270 stories?

Send your answer to editor@beatnikonline.net no later than 25 May to be in the running for the tickets.

Read our interview with Belleruche here.

Major Lazer’s new track features Amber Coffman of the Dirty Projectors.

Diplo and Switch are playing around the UK this week, where you may catch them with Toddla T—who we interviewed here—and Unicorn Kid.

Dates:

04-18 Manchester, England – HMV Ritz *
04-19 London, England – Shepherd’s Bush Empire *
04-20 Birmingham, England – HMV Institute *
04-21 Bristol, England – Motion *
04-22 Glasgow, Scotland – ABC *
04-24 Brussels, Belgium – Botanique
04-27 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Melkweg Amsterdam
04-28 Paris, France – Le Bataclan
05-28 Detroit, MI – The Movement Festival
06-02 Houston, TX – Free Press Summer Fest
06-08 Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo
06-23 New York, New York – Governors Ball
06-28 Rothbury, MI – Randall’s Island Park
07-05 Gdynia, Poland – Heineken Opener Festival
07-06 Graefenhainichen, Germany – Splash Music Festival
07-07 Balado, Scotland – T In The Park
08-16 Mallorca, Spain – Mallorca Rocks
08-17 Ibiza, Spain – Ibiza Rocks
08-25 Liverpool, England – Creamfields
09-07 Berlin, Germany – Berlin Festival

Kutmah presents his compilation Worldwide Family Vol. 2, which is out today on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings.

Hearing Dels feature on the original ‘Eyesdown’ adds yet more beauty to an already paralysing track. Download via player.

From Bonobo’s exquisite Black Sands Remix Album.

While we wait for his sorely over due debut album, our favourite showman of UK hip hop Mystro drops another fantastic new EP for free.
Short and sweet with a string off beats from different producers, it’s another brilliant piece of music from an artist that over the years has been more consistent than chicken soap.

Big Salute. Download here.

We went climbing with Mystro, check our feature and exclusive photoshoot.

From his superb debut album—Lonely Are The Brave, Maverick Sabre’s magnificent ‘Open My Eyes’ is as much hard hitting as it is blissfully soulful.

We tipped Maverick for future glory over two years ago. Read our feature here.

Smart but always with his very British sense of humour, Mystro gives his stance on drug addiction as he explains the perils of cocaine. Taken from his EP What Type of Drug is Mystrogen.

Read our feature with Mystro here.

Jack Colleran is likely to be the best new find this year. And he’s only just begun.

After self-releasing ‘Blisters’ last summer to a storm of excitement, he since has found a home at SQE Music, the perfect place where the rising Irish producer, also known as MMOTHS, can craft his magnificent and sparse electronic creations.

Challenging a conventional thought for genre brackets, he morphs a wide range of influences into dreamy landscapes rich in audio colour. Heart settling synths, dripping in reverb are his main paintbrush along with a sensational nack for timing, unifying lengthy cinematic minimalism which often carries you to a paralysing and personal euphoria.

“I always saw it as a sound that I want you to hear, I never thought of it as current music.”

Jack enthusiastically claims, slightly confused with the recent interest over his music. His Irish accent strong as ever through the crackly phone line.

Citing Flying Lotus and Jamie XX as hero producers – both for their innovation and reluctance to follow trends— he has already shaped his own strong sense of identity; something that is more astonishing when you consider the guy— originally from a sleepy town called Newbridge but now living in Dublin— is just eighteen years old.

Again it’s this issue of timing, generously giving enough space for your emotions to build, that makes his music most appealing. The drawn out intros and minimal use of sounds makes for very exciting ambient electronica.

His incredible debut EP further strengthens that hypothesis. Holding the breathtaking ‘Heart’ and ‘THNX’, the release is timely addictive.

“I thought the main problem with it was that it wouldn’t work as a complete piece.  But it has, so people say, which is good”. Jack continues, thinking about the EP’s emancipation.

The result of long late nights locked away in his bedroom—Jack has serious trouble keeping to normal sleeping patterns and probably why he has that familiar white as a ghost producer look — he’s dreamt of this moment since, well forever.

Channelling a lack of enthusiasm for school—often distracted by the wonders outside his class room window—into an escapism far exceeding the conventional forms experienced by his peer, his routine meant he often got less sleep than the local milkman.

“I really wanted to do music. I’d go to school during the day come home late around eight and work on music throughout the night. Get and hour or two sleep and go back to school and start again. It kind of fucked up my school.” He laughs.

“I think about music twenty-four-seven”

Holding an exhaustible passion and self-belief, rare in people of any age, let a lone his own, what’s more impressive is that Jack, like more and more, is a self-taught producer.

“I never really wanted to go to collage. I just wanted to do music. I thought about doing music production but I’d already taught myself the basics so that didn’t make sense.”

He is yet another in a long line of younger and younger producers that are changing the idea of how music is made. Like the hyped Canadian producer and singer Grimes— she is on her third album having made all three during university using the very basic Garage Band— Jack’s music indicates that a great producer comes from instinct and something a lot deeper within. Technical skills can always come later if ever at all.

With more and more young people opting for a music production at college, it’s ironic then to think the best are sometimes not the ones being taught. A thrilling quality surely, in part, attributed to their rebellious youth.

The same idea can be said about other creative industries like graphic design. With a changing pace of society, economic troubles leading to graduates finding it harder and harder to find work, and a greater accessibility of creative tools to make your own, it begs the question are we going to see a lot more go getters and innovators at younger ages?

Jack certainly has his own opinion about all that.

“I don’t understand going to learn music production.” He unreservedly explains.

“I’d figure a way through it, and if I got caught I’d Google it. I think that’s the way.”

“I don’t think there is a formula for writing a song either. I don’t write music for a reason. There is no story behind the tracks, it’s more for people to interpret themselves.”

Then there’s the debate on what makes an exciting producer.

“Whenever I listen to a track and can’t describe what that sound is, I think that is the most amazing thing ever. There is so much music that sounds the same at the minute. For someone to come and completely just put out something that is completely fresh, I love that – that’s what I want to do.”

“I want people to ask ‘How did he do that’.”

He’s certainly already got people asking that of him. Other tracks on the album include the beautiful ‘If Only’ and ‘Summer’ featuring Superhumanoids. Both sound like perfect cures for miserable days emitting soft and warm echoes of ambience.

The later is also the first of two on the EP — the other being ‘Hearts’ featuring Shelly In Athens— that for the first time on his music feature guests vocals. Though Jack has always made instrumental music, the extra depth these collaborations offer can’t be underestimated.  And surely as his popularity grows there’ll be more to come.

So with that in mind, and still very much developing his early career I finish with asking is the EP leaning towards a potential album?

“I always said I’d make an album when my head was screwed on. An album is the biggest deal. it’s your stamp. That’s it.”

“It’s a scary prospect but I’m not ready for it yet.”

It seems then, the best is yet to come.

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Mmoths website

Nick Zammuto has formed his own band after The Books,who we interviewed, ended. Hear a weird yet catchy album cut from Zammuto, there for free download too.