Quantic: Off The Beaten Track

I always like to know who I'm listening to when I'm enjoying music I haven't heard before but when I'm genuinely intrigued by what I'm hearing I want to know names, dates and more. So, you can imagine how distracting it was to have a friend casually drop a gem in my lap on a CD-R with no track list, no album title, no nothing. Just one word scrawled on it: Quantic.

Quantic is Will Holland, a man who lists both Fugazi and James Brown as influences. That should give you a pretty good idea of the range he possesses and one listen to "Tell It Like You Mean It" from his album An Announcement To An Answer will drive that point home. The song begins with slow, warbling horns alternating between two notes over some extremely subtle lo-fi fuzz before launching into an almost cuban-sounding drumloop. He quickly molds it into an electronic song while still holding onto the same sentiment before bringing you back right where you started. And he does it in less than five minutes.

My favorite thing about this guy? The man loves vinyl. And probably obsessively, if his album Off The Beaten Track is any indication. The album was limited-print CD released almost exactly two years ago of 25 rare soul/funk/afro-cuban/jazz tracks from his 45 collection. The album starts with someone lightly tapping on a snare, barely grazing a cymbal and gently keeping time with a bass drum. The reason I use "someone" is because the official track list for the album might not exist anywhere except on the actual CD insert. Not only is this album no longer for sale anywhere (unless you find it used), but Quantic doesn't even have the track list available on his website. Not even my most trusted vinyl source, Dusty Groove America Dusty Groove could help me out. Interestingly, I found the name for most of the tracks on Vinyl Vulture's Vinyl Vulture message board from a bunch of music geeks who, I must say, had some pretty impressive knowledge. But that was only about 75% of the album they could decipher.

The whole album is flawless, in my opinion, but here are the tracks that made my ears perk up (luckily, I found the titles of them):

Let's Make it Funky

Why Don't They Leave Us Alone

Kristian