Cookin' On 3 BurnersVs.
Warner

- Scientists called the Australian summer just passing, “The Angry Summer”, because of the number of heat related records that were broken and endless days of above average temperatures followed endless nights of the same. Seems it’s time for some cooling down, but record companies aren’t that good with letting the prime season in Australia float off into what passes for autumn and winter. Summer goes on and Warner’s release of Cookin’ On 3 Burners remix album puts at least one more month into the season.

The Melbourne funkster mixing trio of Jake Mason, Dan West and Ivan Khatchoyan are following a road that several of their ilk have followed before. Put some of your best known tunes in the hands of remixers and see what transpires. It can be problematic, as collaborators have been known to be singularly minded about what they see as a “remix”, and stories abound of remixers handing work on to eager studio assistants learning the ropes to do the actual creation, with the master then adding a finishing touch here or there, or not at all but it still comes out of the same factory. CO3B have tempted fate, however it’s not a fatality.

Things started down this road when they worked with Kungs on This Girl and got them noticed across the globe in 2016, and this new project brings in big names such as Yolanda Be CoolStereofunkNiklas Ibach, and Funk Leblanc to work with their original tunes and vocalists, Kylie AuldistFallon Williams and Daniel Merriweather. It’s a beautiful oxymoron to say that the cool production produces some hot results. Cookin’ with Fallon Williams had an earlier life in straight up jazzy-funk treatment, however in Stereofunk’s hands this becomes something akin to a late period James Brown deep grooving piece.

Kylie Auldist’s original version of This Girl features and shows how easy listening the tune really is – and that’s not an insult. It’s a very late afternoon, on the deck, with a cool something or other to relax into. Her work on Mind Made Up has a KC & The Sunshine Band-esque opening and brings a classic disco vibe while still being of this time and not the flary/Spandex past. Yolanda Be Cool is known for chunky beats and that is where Daniel Merriweather’s Losin’ Streak goes with an incessant drive fit with a high hat rhythm that will score big when this track does the rounds of the European summer parties this year.

All of the original versions that get the remix treatment are included to help flesh out the release to full album length rather than it be seen as an opportunistic EP. Putting these tracks after the remixes shows just how far you can go with some real dirty funk without glossing the surface over. Some won’t be impressed but if this can get the vocal talents of people like Kylie Auldist and the keen musicianship of the CO3B trio noticed more, then this is a good thing. Just groove on down to the beach, knowing summer will never go away, figuratively speaking, as you enjoy Vs.

- Blair Martin.

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