BOATS

Hey, this is kind of cool, a two-disc compilation of electronic music whose proceeds benefit Dalit (untouchable) children in Southern India. Lots of good people on the comp -- Deerhoof, Califone, White Hinterland, Four Tet, Doseone -- and they all incorporate vocal samples from the Light of Love Children's Choir, which is comprised of kids who might theoretically benefit if you were to plunk down for this thing. I am personally really loving the way that the kids' voices thread through so many different kinds of material. The exact same little melody floats through Deerhoof's whimsied geometries and Califone's weathered junkyard folk, but it sounds completely different.

Here's the Four Tet song.


BOATS is out in January on Transgressive North

White Hinterland

I’ve been a fan of Casey Dienel’s for a while now (how could I not when she recorded her breakout Wind-Up Canary in Western Mass during the dead of winter?), and really enjoyed her latest White Hinterland album even though it sounds nothing like the fresh-faced, piano-bar-crossed-with-bedroom-folk debut that I feel for in the first place. Of Kairos, I wrote “Dienel has made a sharper break from the past, building chilled, echoing, dub-infused caverns of sound and singing within them in a very sophisticated, R&B flavored style.”

The review was in Blurt yesterday or maybe the day before


“Icarus”

We watched Hoosiers last night, and I got unexpectedly teary and nostalgic about Indiana high school basketball…Of course, I couldn’t wait to get out at the time, go figure.