2006 was the year Kraak & Smaak made the jump from being a cool retro-funk act pumping out some essential vinyl releases to a world beating live act with one of the funkiest debut albums in recent history. In between releasing their own records and touring the US, UK, their home country of Holland and everywhere in-between they also found time to do some serious re-rubs of friends, acquaintances and the odd superstars work.
So first off how did the Jamiroquai remixes come about? "Well" says Oscar "the Kraak & Smaak yacht is coincidentally moored next to Jay Kay's in Ibiza and often time when he came back from a night out at Pacha he would hear our tunes and ask for a remix. To start off with we said no but then one day as we were mooring the yacht after a day out at sea we did quite a lot of damage to his boat and so we did the remix as a way of making things right between us"
Whoa - serious story there boys and what about the Mark Rae mix? "Well that was a little bit more straightforward" says Mark Kneppers "We are members of the same parachute club and he used to play me stuff on his ipod when we were in the plane on the way up. I really loved Medicine so we agreed to remix it. Oscar drops some incredible Rhodes at the end of it that's made it a big favourite with the jazz heads"
And the Dorfmeister mix? "Just a chance connection" says Wim " I was mountain climbing in Nepal and I like to use some little chants to keep my concentration. One of them is "I like the Nightlife, I Like to Boogie" I was saying it over and over to myself as I climbed a very steep internal corridor of Annapurna - what I didn't realise is the acoustics carried and amplified the chant down the valley to where Richard Dorfmeister was trekking. He'd recently completed his Boogie No More track and when he heard this chant come echoing down from above he decided it would fit perfectly on a remix. He waited for me to come down and proposed it to me on the spot. Bizarre really."
And the other mixes on the album? "Well most of them have a story attached. Some of them were done for the labels we're signed to, others were done for friends for instance Mimezine is a band that our bass player was in before, others were done for exposure when nobody knew us and just occasionally we did one because we needed the money. But even those ones we showed full love to and gave them the proper Kraak & Smaak treatment."
And treat them they did because unlike most remix albums this doesn't sound like a cobbled together collection, these all sound like Kraak & Smaak tracks. You can tell that the band really put a lot of themselves into each remix they do and the mixes have a common theme of uncommon funk. Funk is kind of an overused word these days but when you've got it you've got it and these boys got it big time.