A mixtape can be many things, but one thing is for sure, a mixtape is more than just random songs put in a particular order. It’s about recontextualizing sounds, giving them a new meaning (sometimes very different from the original) by setting them side by side, or juxtapozed in ingenious ways with others. Best thing about mixtapes, most of them are FREE (!), and they’re a great way to discover new music. In this new column, Juan Data gives you a worthy one every week.
MIXTAPE: Lo Mejor y Sabor de Quantic
DJ: Jeremy Sole
This one is an oldie. Well, five months is kinda old in the current world of digital mixtapes. They seem to pop out of everywhere every day. But it’s also an oddity of a mixtape because it’s all about the work of one artist and one that I admire a lot: Quantic. It was done by KCRW’s DJ Jeremy Sole to celebrate/promote Quantic’s latest release. Besides including lots of his very heterogenous body of work, it has some exclusives and rarities, plus chuncks of dialogue from radio interviews, which breaks away with the usual format of a mixtape and makes it more into some sort of a podcast or something.
The reason I chose it is because I really wanted to talk about Quantic, who many of you must already know, but some may not. Quantic is the alter ego (or shall I say one of the alter egos) of British producer William Holland, who started accumulating recognition for his remix work in the early 2000s working around mostly soul, funk, and reggae. Later he was suddenly abducted by tropical Latin music and since then he’s been exploring the sounds of Colombia and beyond. He’s so serious about his Latinization that he actually moved to Cali, where he lives and records since 2007.
For early 2011, Quantic has announced the release of a collection of cumbia covers of golden-era hip-hop classics and I’m dying to hear it. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this video (below) from a couple of weeks ago, when he played cumbia accordion on a Colombian awards show, along with an all-star band that included Toy Selectah, Pernett, Lido Pimienta, Sonidero Nacional’s Morenito de Fuego, and Jiggy Drama.
Download Jeremy Sole’s Lo Mejor y Sabor de Quantic below to begin your Quantic education.