New Breed EP

Checan is an 18-year-old producer from Sheffield with a serious talent for making innovative, stylish garage. Though he has done a number of remixes for relatively big names before, this is his debut release of original material on Sheffield's Tipping Point Music and is already shaking things up, receiving multiple plays on Toddla T's Radio One show, amongst others.

Title track 'New Breed' starts with warm but affected synths and a sparse rhythm of claps and hats, slowly thinning out rather than swelling before the drop - a classy touch. Once the tune gets fully underway, DRS spits fairly standard UKG lyrics, but his flow complements the beats well and matches Checan's slightly nichey timbre, which comes through in increasing doses towards the tune's conclusion. The musical ideas could possibly be developed more, but the beats are tight and the young producer certainly knows his way around his synths.

But b-side 'Nervous' is where I fully realised the potential of Checan. A melodic and complex piece of future garage, it melds fluttering two-step rhythms with a delicious palette of melodic patterns and chord changes that wouldn't sound out of place on the Richard D James album. This is all carried along by a minimal but majestic sine wave bass line until the full beat drops, 4 and a half minutes in.

This is stunning music from a producer who could quite possibly be Sheffield's next big thing.