The bit of previous I’ve had with The Herbaliser had led me to believe they were a bit of a mood band – the kind of disc you’d spin in the background to slowly start a party or simply to chill out to, but some of the choices on here make me think they’re probably something much more exciting. Tracks like ‘The Blend’, reminding me of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack (“t-u-r-t-l-e POWER!”), and ‘It Ain’t Nuttin’ drip with a shady menace and ‘Gadget Funk’ is surely the manic result of letting Kraftwerk loose at a laser convention; they are witty, danceable, memorable anthems that demand your attention.

It’s Ollie Teeba’s passion for all things hip-hop that shines through best of all here, but of course without Jake’s Wherry’s sharp jazz and funk nous it would probably count for little. That Wherry had early schooling in James Brown was key as when he finally teamed up with Teeba to form The Herbaliser, back in 1995, they discovered a happy marriage between the different styles. They’ve been mixing up funk with jazz and hip-hop ever since, regularly releasing albums on the Ninja Tune and K7! labels, and putting on live shows, often as part of the oddest line-ups, all over the world. Herbal Tonic is a collection of the “best” of their tracks and features an impressive list of the collaborating artists they’ve worked with over the years – people like the smooth-talking Jean Grae, MF Doom, Seaming To and Roots Manuva.

On closer inspection, the resultant conglomeration of such a diverse array of talents is like a huge musical lego set. As each little sequence is built brick upon brick, a sprawling city of exciting, nay life-affirming coloured layers slowly emerges. It gifts you the feeling of youthful abandon and recklessness. Soulful to the core and yet still pulse-racingly hectic, it really urges you into an adventure within the cobwebbed recesses of your imagination. I listened to ‘The Missing Suitcase’ on my headphones the other day, whilst walking down a busy Cambridge street, and suddenly I was a secret agent on a solo mission, all the time being trailed by suspicious looking tourists in shades – yes, it was sunny. It was that sinister 60s Spy-Fi background music (a tone that they continually return to in later tracks) that suddenly had me evading suspicious glances, peering round corners before turning down side-streets, or flattening myself to shop fronts.

Some of this still feels a little like filler; shallow cheese-ridden curiosities that loose their shine all too quickly – the psychedelic jazz-flute erotica of ‘The Sensual Woman’, the previously unreleased brainless stomp of ‘March Of The Dead Things’ or the Eartha Kitt-ish chorus line predictability of ‘Something Wicked’. It’s all too easy to forgive and forget when you’ve got bump and grind, grime-rich monsters like Roots Manuva’s ‘Starlight’ or Jean Grae’s nifty, yet revolting idea of combining ‘Tea & Beer’ which pulses like a rhythmic sequence of earthquake aftershocks.

With all the infusion of jazz structures, the music often takes on a lounge quality that works beautifully with the rock solid backbeat of the hip-hop – I can see now where the eclectic Bombay Monkey get so many of their brilliant ideas from! I suppose, in a way, this is mood music after all. For anyone that’s had a bad day, I can’t think of anything that’s more likely to get you bubbling again than a little of this tasty ‘Herbal Tonic’.