Cool Hunting
Don't you love it when things just happen by perfect coincidence? So I'm scratching my head, knowing I need some new music in my life, but having no idea what to get when the new Quantic Soul Orchestra album arrives through my door. We're huge fans of main-man Will Holland here at CH, and even went crate-digging with him last year for Cool Hunting Video. His latest album, released this week, is deeply inspired by his numerous record-hunting excursions across Europe and the Americas, and boils all the influences down into music he describes as tropical, funky and heavy. Tropidelico indeed.
Evocative places like San Sebastian, Marrakech and Panama City double as track names for tight, addictively toe-tapping work-outs that freely pull bits of rhythm from Afrobeat and pieces of melody from Latin American cumbia folk-dance music. American rapper J-Live lends his rhymes to the Cuban-sounding She Said What? and Noelle Scaggs' soulful vocals appear on Lead Us To The End. Things mellow significantly towrads the end for Father, which, judging by the liner notes, is a tune for Holland's own dad, who died last year. Taken as a whole, the record is both a fitting tribute and a cracking listen.
Available from Tru Thoughts Records now on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon or iTunes.
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