The Best of Quantic

Quantic has taken the world music, clubbing and Latin scenes by stealth. A musician, DJ and record producer based in Cali, Colombia, his pants-swinging blend of dancefloor salsa, bossa nova, soul, funk and jazz has been played everywhere from Bogotá to Bournemouth. The likes of Gilles Peterson and Mark Ronson rate him highly in the soul/jazz scene, while the venerable Don Letts has labelled him the tropical dub master. Unlike other DJs, much of Quantic's sound is original; there is little in the way of samples and lots in the way of rootsy innovation.

If not exactly a household name, it's perhaps because he sometimes uses other monikers: the Quantic Soul Orchestra (for heavy soulful funk); Flowering Inferno (for dub and reggae fusion); and Quantic & his Combo Bárbaro (for serious Latin swing). These days his real identity – that of Will Holland of Bewdley, Worcestershire – is seldom referred to, though it was the 20-year-old Holland who approached Tru Thoughts boss Robert Louis a decade ago. The fruits of their creative partnership (along with three new tracks) are here on this wildly varied but uniformly juicy two-CD set, which kicks off with the epic and precedent-setting ‘Time is the Enemy’ and veers all over the globe from there, helped by Alice Russell, Kinny and Spanky Wilson, whom he produces. All the world and its clubs are here, along with politically aware lyrics on tracks such as ‘Don't Joke With a Hungry Man, stellar guest artists like Peruvian pianist Alfredo Linares and, more than anything, cumbia in all its loping Afro-Latin glory. Things don't come much cooler than this.