Yolanda Be Cool

Andrew Stanley and Matthew Handley form Yolanda Be Cool. Their 2010 recording with producer DCUP is a particular collaboration within that wider project, drawing on Renato Carosone’s Tu vuò fa’ l’americano. The source material supplies much of the first impression, while the arrangement determines how its fragments behave inside a contemporary dance record.

That distinction is useful when approaching the catalogue. The duo’s identity extends beyond one partner and one sampled song, with DJ work and other productions developing a broader sense of rhythm, selection and how an unexpected musical reference can work in a club.

The 2012 album gathers a varied group of voices, including Barbara Tucker on Love Keeps, Betty Wright on Paper Girl, Omar on To Be Alone and Gurrumul on A Baru in New York. Those encounters do more than supply a list of guests. Each singer changes the emotional weight and melodic possibilities of the instrumental setting. The album therefore offers a useful counterpart to the immediate sample recognition of We No Speak Americano. A newly recorded vocal can become the centre of a more sustained song, while the producers continue to organise the movement around it. Later singles and DJ mixes keep that relationship between selection and construction active. Yolanda Be Cool are most interesting where the record offers an inviting first gesture and then makes a smaller rhythmic or vocal detail matter, letting the pleasure of familiarity lead into something more specifically their own.