“I'm getting to the stage in my life where I have a lot of different strands to my music,” prolific UK producer Will Holland—aka Quantic—tells Apple Music. “It’s like having lots of love children who have never met.” This vibrant album, which absorbs local music from his seven years in Colombia and his travels across the US, connects these strands. “The mission was to have a record where everyone sits at the same table, like a very awkward family meal where they've walked into the same place.” Here, Holland takes us track by track through his incredibly un-awkward album. "Divergence” “There are some painful moments in this record. My mother passed away last year, and I wrote this after her passing as a string quartet piece. Both my parents have passed now and—both times—it’s always been a desperate rush to see them and a massive commotion. Everything moves at light speed and you go into this lucid world, maybe because your mind wants to protect you. It’s surreal, but at the end of all that, it just stops still. Those are the emotions I was trying to sum up in this song; that's why there are a lot of peaks and falls in the song, especially in the middle.” "Incendium” “One thing behind this record is the meaning between live and electronic. I’ve been touring with a new band setup, and this song along with ‘September Blues’ set the tone for what's been happening onstage. The last song I sang on is ‘Painting Silhouettes,’ which has slowly become more popular and people request in sets. Seeing people listen to it live gave me confidence to try more with my own voice.” "September Blues” “This is also a track that came out of playing live a lot. It was a song that before I'd finished we started playing around with it onstage. Eventually, I re-recorded with live drummers, and particularly drummers I'd been playing with onstage. When you're touring every day and playing, you start making tweaks and the true nature of the song really comes to you. Making songs is like stabbing in the dark at the start, and then the lights come up and you start to see the form of it.” "You Used to Love Me” (feat. Denitia) “Denitia and I met in Brooklyn. She’s a really talented songwriter and singer. When I first moved there, I had another studio space and I was doing a lot of experiments with modular synthesis to try and get away from a computer screen. The theme with this record is trying to go back to a vibe-based song with a mantra of building up this...feeling. As soon as Dentita goes into the studio, she's turning the lights down and putting on incense. She's very vibe-oriented with her songwriting, and that definitely came across with the finish of the song.” "Atlantic Oscillations” “This track and ‘Motivic Retrograde’ are both disco-orientated. This was about reasserting myself as an electronic musician. You go and do something else for a minute and people forget. This song came out of spending a couple of summers in New York, riding my bike around on sunny days, going to disco parties, hanging out, taking in some really good music, and listening to house-tempo music. This is my take on that time.” "Now or Never” (feat. Alice Russell) “Lyrically, this song speaks to the idea of not doing things. Life's too short; use what you have. Whether it's a relationship or what you want to do—it speaks to that idea of 'do it today whilst you have today.' It was written a couple of years before my mum passed and had a lot to do with making the most of people in your life. In 2019 there's so much drama. It's nice to give people a soothing song and be like: ‘Yo, it doesn't have to be that complicated.’ There's something lilting in the energy—which I really love—and Alice is an absolute master of that kind of feel, too.” "Orquídea” (feat. Sly5thAve) “I was looking for a song title and remembered when I had this house up in the foothills of the Colombian Andes. I’d have to hike there, and the orchids were always so beautiful. When you see an orchid—at least in the States—it's a very trimmed, neat plant. But when you see an orchid in the rainforest of South America, it's such a beautiful, wild experience, and I wanted to name it after that.” "Tierra Mama” (feat. Nidia Góngora) “Nidia and I met when I was living in Cali, Colombia. We’ve been making music for a long time now. This song stemmed out of Nidia’s home—a tiny Afro-Colombian town called Timbiquí. I spent a little time over there and I remember the mornings. I’d see people on wooden canoes, women paddling, mangroves and mists. It's a really strong visual vignette and a cool place to start writing a song. We both feel very strongly about the environment, especially in the rivers around Timbiquí. There's been a lot of change in her lifetime within that town. It started off just wooden houses, minimal electricity, no roads, and now there's been a massive mining boom.” "Motivic Retrograde” “This is the sister song of ‘Atlantic Oscillations.’ The title came out of this really cool ’70s book about electronic music. It came with a seven-inch in the back where it would play all the different oscillations and tones. I saw the phrase—Motivic Retrograde—within the book and thought it was a cool idea for a song.” "La Reflexión” “This song has a shamanic, maybe mantra-esque vibe as it holds a very cyclical, repetitive energy. I've been traveling a lot in South America, Argentina, and Ecuador, and I've been hanging out with Nicola Cruz [Ecuadorian electronic producer], Chancha Vía Circuito [Argentinian DJ], and other artists. I feel like this song belongs in their world a little bit more than mine, or is coming from their world into mine.” "Is It Your Intention” “I have a little pocket synth piano and make songs on planes, especially on long-haul flights. Always just trying— if I can—to knock out a few ideas. Even if the guy in front of me has the seat all the way down. It's funny how often the inception of song ideas are made in a remote place—like on a plane. Recently we recorded some guitars on a cruise ship. I always wonder, where am I going to say this is recorded? It's technically international waters.”