A celebration of the event that sadly has missed Adelaide since a catastrophic rainstorm destroyed thousands of dollars worth of equipment in 1998, the ‘Vibes on a Summers Day’s Tenth Anniversary’ double CD features many of the acts that have been featured at the festival over the last ten years, plus many of their favourite tunes. It’s light, varied, fun, and groovy, without being pretentious, capturing the essence of the event and the vibe of the Australian summer.

The first disc starts with Ian Pooley’s Bay of Plenty. This spicy house track sets the mood perfectly, with it’s soulful sax riff and salsa driven beats, followed by Xpress 2’s Lazy, featuring David Byrne from Talking Heads. This is getting a lot of airplay on Triple J and Fresh FM, and it’s very infectious. A few track later take a detour from the smooth funk, in the form of Propellerheads Take California, and this is neatly followed by a head bobbing, foot tapping set of breakbeat fun, rounded off by the classic Groove is in the Heart. Returning to the funk, we find the likes of Moloko, Jamiroquai and Jestofunk finishing off the first CD.

Unlike the first CD, the second doesn’t flow as well musically. It seems a little more disjointed. The first CD could almost be mixed, rolling along from one tune to the next, while the second definitely sounds like tunes simply thrown together. While personally I would have liked the second CD to feature some of the more heavier breakbeat sounds the festival has featured, such as Bentley Rhythms Ace, Adam Freeland, or the hiphop styling of The Herbaliser and Roots Manuva, the second CD continues much in the same way as the first – mellow but funky and groovy.

Mo’Horizons start the CD off with a simple but cool little tune Yes Baby. The Freestyler’s with their biggest hit Told You So, featuring the wonderful voice of Petra Jean Phillipson, follow this. After that is Stereo MC’s connected, which, while an excellent tune, seems out of place between the soul funk 60’s throwback of Told You So and the 70’s sounding funk of Wicked Beat Sound System’s Brand New Day. Without meaning to sound dismissive, the rest of the CD sounds like an Ibiza “chill out” album. It has a much better tune selection than the aforementioned CD formats – Tio Electrico and MJ Cole’s tracks are good, but seem out of place amongst the more housier elements of EON or even Rae & Christians All I Ask.

The variety is pretty indicative of the overall feel of Vibes on a Summers Day – an assortment of different, groovy, funky, danceable music, but leaving the heavier hiphop and breaks off means an essential element of Vibes is missing, leaving this huge fan of these events just a little disappointed. I can get beyond that to say this is a great double album that takes me back to the great times I had at Vibes and if you’ve never been to Vibes, it is a great double CD of excellent summer chill tunes that is better value musically than the flock of “chill” albums available at the moment.