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.

Astaire lays down one hell of a smooth groove and it doesn’t exactly hurt that’s he’s mixed in classic vocals from the likes of Jay-Z, D’Angelo, Redman, Method Man, Pharrell, Lil Kim, OutKast, Angie Stone, Missy Elliot, Timbaland and Erykah Badu. But Nuggets for the Needy ain’t a mix or even remix album. Many DJs would use such instantly recognisable vocal tracks to lure listeners towards yet another misguided mash up. However Astaire has crafted entirely new backing tracks for his stellar list of vocalists that, unlike the vast majority of mash-ups or many remixes, perfectly complement the vocal.

‘Rollin’ Stone’ blurs Erykah Badu’s ‘On and On’ with OutKast’s ‘Elevators’ over a dubby haze of piano and beats. Amazingly Astaire’s work manages to make Badu’s classic even more laid-back and spliffed than the smoky original. The rework of Pharrell’s ‘Can I Have It Like That’ is the soundtrack to owning a multi million dollar yacht, its lush, soaring strings will make you James Bond for at least its four minute play time. Pharrell is rumoured to be releasing his disappointing In My Mind record, with new production input from ?uestlove, but they’ll struggle to top Astaire’s rework – especially when Astaire’s strings are smoother than the legs of the any supermodel Pharrell could helicopter to his floating Mediterranean pad for the afternoon.

It may not be summer here, but things are always warm and laid back somewhere. And that ‘somewhere’ can be where ever you play ‘Nuggets for the Needy’.