News Ben Khan

: Ben Khan
Based: London
Listen: Soundcloud.com/benkhan
Similar to: Who else? Jai Paul.

Mystery surrounds Ben Khan. As so often is the trend, details on him are scarce, with the only information to hand being that he’s in his early twenties and that he resides in London. Khan’s name first appeared in July with debut track ‘Drive (Part 1)’. A couple of weeks back he followed it up with ‘Eden’. Two tracks in and it’s clear that if there’s a better pair of debut tracks around, they’re locked away in a tiger-guarded studio.

Comparisons with Jai Paul will be inescapable for Khan but should JP continue as the elusive prince of Rayners Lane, then Khan will rightfully take the crown as Soho’s spectral voyeur. ‘Drive (Part 1)’ is steeped in slick, late-night coolness, a perfect track that could feature on any modern film noir. Out of the shadows comes a violently throbbing bass, with Khan’s distant, near-falsetto sighs in tune to an incisive hand-clap beat. The slinky wah-wah guitar and gentle, highly expressive croon is nothing out of the ordinary but in the context of ‘Drive (Part 1)”s seedy character it’s positively strange. You can actually picture Khan slowly curb-crawling, with a hand clad in leather, strongly gripped to the wheel.

On new track ‘Eden’, imagination is abundant. It defies classification, sweeping from grinding funk guitar to flourishes of horns that peel more like an elephant’s trunk than any brass instrument. So far, so Ben Khan - no surprise to anyone who has heard ‘Drive (Part 1)’. However, shunning the reverb, Khan’s vocals are clearer than the previous track, with enigmatic lines like ‘Palms to the sky on a religious high’ contrasting with explicitly sweet and intense lines like ‘She’s like a dream, a feverish dream’. Khan murmurs over a languid bass throb, before kicking the percussion into high gear and letting the creeping synths, guitar and horns take over. From then on, it’s an explosion of interweaving rhythms and melodies.

In a year where hybridity has worked for big hitters like Daft Punk and rising stars JUNGLE, it’ll only be a matter of time before popular music invites Ben Khan out of the bedroom and into the charts. Two tracks in, he’s already stacking up the hits and Khanting.