Los Miticos del Ritmo

British producer Will ‘Quantic’ Holland’s love for Colombia grows ever deeper with Los Miticos del Ritmo, his new instrumental cumbia album. Recorded on all-analogue equipment with local musicians from Cali, Colombia, it’s an album that easily could have been released in cumbia’s golden age – so authentic is the sound and proficient the musicianship. It’s the choice of covers which gives the game away. ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ huffs and puffs but its broken rock riff never really suits the fluid rhythm of cumbia: by contrast ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough’ could pass as an original, with accordion and clarinet doing a fine job of finding a new life for one of Michael Jackson’s most infectious melodies. Along with the original ‘Willy’s Merengue’ it’s one of the few tracks where it feels like the band are at the top of their game, inciting the kind of feel¬good grooves that mark the best cumbia.

When reverting back to his old trick of combining Jamaican and Colombian rhythms, Holland fares even better, as the cumbia-meets-dub ‘Satta Massa Cumbia’ proves. But you sense that this album is just an extra bottle of rum or two away from being truly convincing as a lost Colombian classic.