The second album from Will ‘Quantic’ Holland moved into new areas aside from boom-bap instrumental hip hop and melancholy beatology, adding elements of Latin and Afrobeat to his already rich genre-cross-pollination strategy. Aided by judicious and highly creative sampling alongside organic instrumentation elements, Apricot Morning is built on a series of expertly assembled beats, rhythms and percussion tracks made from funk breaks, Latin loops, Afro-flavoured snare-patterns, funky congas — this is dance music, born from hip hop sample culture, an album that functions like a tribute to and reinterpretation of the Afro-Caribbean musical diaspora. UK vocalist extraordinaire Alice Russell is on fine form on a couple of the tracks and UK hip hoppers Aspects and L.A. producer/beatmaker EQ also guest too. Way beyond the ‘chill out/trip hop’ label, it’s a high-end album of jazz-adjacent production-hop, sample-step, recycled funk and Latin-tronica.

– Harold Heath