Kylie Auldist On Kungs' Out Of Tune Back-Up Singers Singing Her Parts

Kylie Auldist has long reigned as Melbourne's premiere soul diva - performing with The Bamboos, Cookin' On 3 Burners and solo. This year she found herself charting across Europe as the voice of This Girl - a Cookin' On 3 Burners track remixed by the French house DJ Kungs. But now she's busting out with her boldest project yet in the electro-funk Family Tree - presaged by 2015's single Sensational. "I love dance music," Auldist says.

The neo-soulstress is in Marios, the iconic Fitzroy cafe, enjoying a late lunch and beer post-rehearsal. Auldist has experienced a new level of fame since This Girl blew up - to her amusement. She tells of an interview with Channel 7 News: "We talked for an hour and the only thing they concentrated on was that I was a mother from Glenroy! It was like, 'Well, what about the music?' But it's never about the music, is it? They've gotta find another angle."

Hailing from Hay, NSW, Auldist escaped to Melbourne to pursue just that - music. She sang backing vocals for Renee Geyer and Jimmy Barnes. Auldist also gigged in bands, eventually joining Lance Ferguson's The Bamboos. The group's UK label, Tru Thoughts, secured her as a solo act - and Auldist debuted with 2008's Just Say. Meanwhile, she moonlighted with Cookin' On 3 Burners - then a Bamboos spin-off. They issued This Girl as a single in 2009. After teen DJ Kungs remixed the dormant song, it topped the charts in countries like France and reached #2 in the UK. However, the remix doesn't credit Auldist as vocalist, nor is she in the video. "I don't complain about anything that happens to me," she says. "I think life has been good to me, and this career's been good to me. I'm completely happy for my friends Cookin' On 3 Burners - they wrote it. I'm rapt for them. We all wish for something like this to happen, you know?"

"I don't complain about anything that happens to me," she says. "I think life has been good to me, and this career's been good to me."

Regardless, Auldist rolls her eyes at Kungs' promotion of This Girl - the DJ hiring nondescript vocalists for live PAs. "They can't even sing in tune!" But, she sighs, "Kungs doesn't really speak to us." Meanwhile, Auldist herself is singing This Girl in European nightclubs. What's more, she's capitalising on its success to launch Family Tree, her first dance album. "The serendipitous thing that happened was that I'd already made an album [and] that it was ready to come out just the very minute that this all happened. So I could follow it up with like, 'Well, here's something I prepared earlier!'"

On Family Tree Auldist recreates classic electro-boogie - channelling Chaka Khan, Teena Marie and Gloria Estefan (circa Miami Sound Machine). "That was the sort of music that I'd loved in the '80s." The genre was due for a revival - Mark Ronson flirting with it on Uptown Special.

Auldist initially raised the idea of producing a "disco" album with Ferguson. The Bamboos might "tease" Auldist for "liking Sneaky Sound System", but Ferguson, a sometime DJ, was up. Still, the input of Graeme Pogson, boogie aficionado, ensured Family Tree's viability. "He gave it that flavour." The songs "flowed".

Australia's soul music scene has flourished in recent times with acts like Hiatus Kaiyote and Ngaiire. Ironically, Auldist feels constrained. "I'm done with soul," she declares. "I've always been a lot more of a funk girl. Soul was a fashionable thing. And, because I was offered a record deal to do it, I was like, 'Sure, let's do it' - and then, 'cause I'm in The Bamboos, it all sort of fit me." Nonetheless, she "got a bit sick of doing nanna music." "I don't wanna be Engelbert Humperdinck," Auldist laughs. She sought to record something "current" - "even though it's kind of like going back for me."

Family Tree is Auldist's most candid work thematically, too. "It is close to my heart." The album is "a tribute" to her late father. "My family is important to me." (She jokes how they "infuriate" and "inspire" her.)

Auldist maintains that she's into "all different types of music". And, here, Family Tree reveals another twist - Auldist turns Cold Chisel's Saturday Night into a roller-rink jam. "It was an anthem of my childhood." She doesn't know if Barnesy has heard it.

The new disruptive Auldist may be too OTT for soul purists. Curiously, Tru Thoughts declined Family Tree - and so the Aussie switched to Freestyle Records, home of Cookin' On 3 Burners, the deal inked before This Girl hit. "So it was like, 'Oh, you get rewarded!'" Auldist quips.

The singer is "excited" to embark on her Dancefloor Diva Tour, with a new live band centred around computers and synths (plus horn section to placate ol' skool punters at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues). "I don't have a drummer and a bass player on this tour," Auldist says. "I miss them, I miss them badly, but you just can't do all those crazy sounds."