Album Review: Quantic & Alice Russell - Looking Around The Corner

Several years ago, after a clutch of brilliant funk and soul-based albums, Will Holland (aka Quantic) suddenly disappeared up his own arse. Okay, it was actually to the city of Cali in Colombia where he formed a band and experimented with the local cumbia style on albums Tropidelico and The Flowering Inferno, sets that, though far from terrible, alienated fans not digging the 'world' sound.

Yet if there was one surefire way to roar back into the limelight, it would be to record an entire album with the magnificent Alice Russell on vocals. Holland and Russell have worked together on numerous tracks over the years yet Look Around The Corner marks their first full-length collaboration. Not that he has completely returned to his old sound by any means – the album is powered by his Colombian brethren Combo Barbaro, their sassy, humid Latin rhythms and Russell's voice complementing each other beautifully.

The opening title track is probably the highlight of the set; bright and optimistic and dripping with '60s psych. Travelling Song and Magdalena allow Russell's wrong-side-of-the-tracks Motown-isms to glow over hard drums and soaring strings. I'll Keep My Light In My Window is another triumph as Russell holds out for her man over a ripping, rather familiar groove while Une Tarde En Marquita, one of a handful of instrumentals, recalls the rhythms of War, lightened with horns and fiddle. Look Around The Corner is a sparkling collision of worlds, (three if you take into consideration its melanin-deficient proponents), welcoming Quantic back into the fold and consolidating Russell as the true queen of blue-eyed soul.