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Jamie xx’s solo album is made of polygons and dance music

Feeling starved for layered electronic beats and primary-colored shapes? Well, you’re in luck. In Colour, the debut album by Jamie xx, is here to fill that rectangle-shaped void in your heart. Like the music of his other project, The xx, Jamie’s solo work is low-key and beautifully simple, but In Colour feels very much its own thing. Informed by the dance music traditions of UK DJs, Jamie xx takes beats that would feel at home in the 90s and re-skins them for 2015. beats that would feel at home in the 90s  Since his solo work is based in a…

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Beat Blox is like real-life Patatap

The intuitive, color-soaked beat-making app Patatap is something we still think you should check out. Following in its footsteps is Beat Blox, a grad project by Swedish student Per Holmquist. His piece, created at the Beckmans College of Design, takes Patatap‘s tactility and fuses that with the much-vaunted (by your dad, while he looms before his chrome all-tube Marantz setup) realness of vinyl: you know, the warmth. The experience. Beat Blox, in contrast to Patatap, acts as a sort of meatspace piano roll, the grid-based system of music making you can cue up in Logic or Fruity Loops. It’s essentially like stretching and placing notes…