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Ben Marc x Mustard (Live)
London-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Marc has shared a new live performance video of “Mustard,” from his forthcoming Glass Effect album (out April 22 from Innovative Leisure). Recorded live at London’s Corsica Studios, the clip gives viewers the opportunity to watch Marc’s band unpack the breezy original, transforming it from a lambent, loop-heavy collision of hip hop production and jazz swagger into a stirring soulful burner. The performance serves to underscore the diverse scope of his singular vision - one that charts his own musical journey from studying classical music, to becoming a key collaborator in the burgeoning London jazz scene, to learning dance and hip hop production techniques, and on.
Ben Marc x Sometimes Slow

London-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Marc has shared another single from his forthcoming Glass Effect album (out this Spring from Innovative Leisure). “Sometimes Slow” pairs a virtuosic skittering drum performance with a circling xylophone pattern that opens up with layers of guitar, synths, and looping percussion. Alongside previous album singles “Mustard,” “Give Me Time,” and “The Way We Are,” the new song is illustrative of his singular vision, unifying a profusion of influences (that chart his personal journey from the concert hall, to the jazz club, to the dance club, and back) into a sublime whole, underscoring the evolution of his quest for a distinctive sound: lambent, low-key, and dizzyingly intricate.  https://smarturl.it/BM_sometimesslow

See a recent piece on Edition where Ben Marc breaks down his top 5 most influential albums.

Ben Marc x Mustard

As reported by Pitchfork, Ben Marc has announced his new album Glass Effect, and shared a track, "Mustard," from the upcoming full length. 

The new album is due in April and is an assured and accomplished 13-track realization of a singular vision that unifies a multitudinous profusion of influences (from free-jazz, to broken beat, to hip hop and beyond) into a sublime whole, underscoring the evolution of his quest for a distinctive sound: lambent, low-key, and yet dizzyingly intricate. It’s a rare talent that can link Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke, Afrofuturists Sun Ra Arkestra, and grime legend Dizzee Rascal, but Marc has long blurred musical worlds and criss-crossed boundaries. On double and electric bass, he flits between jazz, classical, and electronic music, whether playing on Greenwood’s award-winning score for the film The Master or touring with Astatke for over 10 years, as well as working with the likes of Matthew Herbert, Charles Mingus, China Moses, and Soweto Kinch – and even joining Tina Turner once onstage.

Marc, the alias of Neil Charles, has quite the musical pedigree. While studying classical double bass at the prestigious Trinity College of Music in London, Marc had a chance meeting with Gary Crosby, linchpin of Tomorrow’s Warriors (the crucial London jazz educators that connect the UK new wave luminaries, from Nubya Garcia to Moses Boyd) after which the possibility of jazz shone like a beacon. This began a game-changing journey that led him to play with the jazz group Empirical and then to form the free-jazz trio Zed-U, alongside Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming) and drummer Tom Skinner, whose collaborations ignited a new passion in Marc for electronic music. 

KCRW describes the track "Mustard" in it's 5 songs of the week: This is not a track, it’s a score. Expertly arranged by producer and composer Ben Marc, “Mustard” is a kinetic piece of music, a sidewinder, an undulating sonic story — and it’ll move you in so many ways. Play this one through headphones and minimize the distractions to make sense of whatever mess is in your head.