It’s that time again, a little bit of the sting has been taken out of the sun and the silly season is starting to wind down, it must be time for Good Vibrations. Held each year in February by Jam, the festival has featured some great talent over the years. This year amongst the highlights are Jurassic 5, Beastie Boys, Nightmares on Wax and Kraak & Smaak. Accompanying the nation wide tour is a double CD of some of this years artist’s work, disc one is unmixed but fades ever slightly between each track with disc two mixed by Will Styles.

Disc one kicks off the party with the seminal track from NYC’s Beastie Boys, ’(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)’, punk guitars and simplistic rhymes are still pleasing after so many years. Next up is a funky hip hop style track from the Netherlands, with Kraak & Smaak’s ‘Money In The Bag’, nice funk guitar and good MCing work well on this track from 2003. Out of Australia and receiving plenty of airplay is Sneaky Sound System’s ‘I Love It’, great vocal line and squelchy beats are uncomplicated and it is easy to see the crossover appeal. There are also some great vocals in Nightmares On Wax ‘Know My Name’ and some very tricky scratching and juggling from DJ Yoda in the incredibly funky ‘Wheels’. This has all been great party music and doesn’t stop with Thunderball feat. Afrika Bamaataa’s ‘Thunder In The Junegle’, nice funk guitar will definitely start up the party. Unfortunately the disc seems to take a bit of a turn for the worse and moves away from the funky hip hop influenced beats into more electronic territory with tracks such as Dance With Voices ‘Re Model’, not that this is bad music it just ruins the flow of the disc that I was so enjoying. Unfortunately it is unavoidable when trying to jam such a diverse line up into two CDS.

Disc two starts things up with some great hip hop from the likes of Rahzel with ‘All I Know’ and the funky ‘Bouncin’ from Good Buddha. There is some good representation from Australian artists on this disc which is good to see, DJ Agent 86’s ‘The Ultimate’ is one of the highlights of the album, great samples and nice beats hold it all together. The camp, Prince-style vocals on ‘Electrik Boogie’ from Ursula 1000 work well, leading into the Oliver Koletzki mix of Cassius’ ‘Toop Toop’. There are some sleazy beats from Jeff Drake with ‘One Dress, Two Legs’ as the music again gets into the electro house side of things with artists such as Dirty South and TV Rock. A classic for some, Azzido Da Bass ‘Doom’s Night’ is also featured, Timo Maas mix of course. There is some interesting mixing from Will Styles as he slams this track into overdrive to match the temp of some fun dnb from London Elektricity’s ‘Remember The Future’, very reminiscent of DJ Marky and XRS’s ‘LK’.

This is a fun album with highlights of some of the artists featured at the festival, it would have been nice to have a few more recent releases, but then again you don’t go to festivals to chin stroke… or do you?