Quantic ft: Rationale - Unconditional (Single)
Photo credit: Fabrice Bourgelle
Quantic - aka multi-instrumentalist, DJ, composer and producer Will Holland - announces his new album Dancing While Falling. Now 20 years into his career, the album is the British-born New York-based artist’s most live-sounding, euphoric and, in his own words, grown-up release to date. It will be released November 10 via Play It Again Sam.
To celebrate the announcement, Will also shares a brand new single “Unconditional” featuring Rationale. The new track follows the recently released singles “Run” featuring Andreya Triana, which was Will’s first new material of 2023 and landed straight on the playlist at 6 Music, and empowering disco groover “Stand Up”. On “Unconditional” he worked with vocalist Rationale. Will says, “‘Unconditional’ is a jam that I had spinning on the tape reels for several months, everyone who heard it vibed with it. In searching for the right vocalist and connecting with Rationale, the track really took new life and the final song is something I’m so proud of”.
Rationale adds, “Writing ‘Unconditional’ with Quantic has been an incredible experience. There’s something about this song that feels special and timeless. Performing along aside such talented musicians as Quantic and all the live performers on this record was a true honour and I can’t wait to let it loose into the world”.
As an artist who sees each of his records as an ever-going process of trying to perfect the design, the uplifting and joyful 10-track album is his first release on a larger label. It’s also more concise and stripped down compared to his recent offerings on Tru Thoughts, including 2014’s Magnetica, a mixtape-style montage of all the different musical experiences he had while living in Colombia, and his most recent album, 2019’s Atlantic Oscillations, which comparatively chronicled the journey of how he weaved the sound of his new home of New York into his own sonic world. For the latter, he also slowly gravitated away from making sample-based beats on a laptop and instead ventured into a more symphonic set-up in terms of instrumentation.
Similarly with Dancing While Falling, Quantic wanted to use old school techniques to make something modern, with the aim of creating a record that showed the players on it – an album where their identities and charisma can be heard. Predominantly recorded at his own Brooklyn studio, Selva, Quantic’s initial idea for his new album was to experiment sonically. However, after a while, he changed direction and realised that the record needed to also relate to the human condition - not just his “singular pandemic wormhole”. The demos, then, started off as symphonic, loosely disco-era dance music – a departure from his previous Latin and Spanish instrumental releases.