artist: Quantic country of origin: UK style(s): Trip hop, nu jazz, soul, funk, lounge essential releases: The 5th Exotic (2001, Tru Thoughts)

Sample culture at worst recycles riffs from great songs either out of laziness or for purely commercial gain. At best it cleverly re-assembles fragments of recorded music's rich history to create something new, something much greater the sum of its tiny parts. The best underground hip hop DJ's and producers belong in the latter camp and Will Holland aka Quantic is one them. The 5th Exotic is a brilliant early album from this multi-faceted British artist that's broadly in the trip-hop style, the fertile world of eclectic sample-based instrumentals that the likes of DJ Shadow first opened up in the early 1990's. It's also one of the most intense records of its kind ever released; the jazz, hip hop and funk surfaces barely hide the music's surreal undertow.

This is hip hop at its core so it all starts with sampled drum breaks, of course, which on their own sound not much different from other records in the style. It's the way Holland builds around them that matters, and this is where he creates his own unique cinema of the mind. Check the incredibly phat downtempo grooves he forges with layered saxophones and trumpets on "Snakes In The Grass" and "Common Knowledge". Or the juxtaposition of romantic piano phrases with a thundering drum break on "Time Is The Enemy" which creates a delicious ambiguity. His finely judged use of old film and TV dialogue samples is the album's crowning achievement. Themes of infinite regression, existential crisis, spiritual awakening, forbidden lust - heady stuff but done in such a way that intriguing sense of mystery is created. This possibility of different interpretations is one of the marks of great ambient downtempo.

Holland's recorded output since The 5th Exotic - as both Quantic and The Quantic Soul Orchestra - has grown more straightforward and uptempo, sometimes with lyrics by UK soul singer Alice Russell. It's a common enough shift among instrumental hip hop producers: they start out in the bedroom all cerebral, grow a following and then face the unique demands of live performance and audiences up for a party.

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