Red Astaire: Nuggets For The Needy

One odd thing about living way down here under the equator is that we get ‘summer’ albums just as our summer is dying down. Sure, it makes sense to release this album when the majority of the world’s music buying population is checking the gas in their BBQs – damn Europeans and Yanks – but there’s a certain cruelty for us southerners.

The new mix album from Red Astaire is most definitely a summer record. The cover copies the Red Stripe logo – a fine beer for summer lounging and, unsurprisingly, the music follows the lounging summer theme. It’s a ‘sand between toes, rocking in a hammock with a battered straw hat on sipping on beers’ type of sound. Red Astaire may be Swedish, but he’s drawing on Latin, reggae and soul sounds; rather than those staples of the Swedish Eurovision entry – pop, metal and pop metal.

Astaire is probably better known by the similarly altered nom de plume – Freddy Cruger – though there is little that separates the sound produced under each name. If you were seduced by last years excellent Freddy Cruger record, Soul Search, you’ll definitely need to get your hands on this set of mixes.

Read the full review here