Oh giddy joy: holiday season is upon us. To celebrate, dive into our 24-track Boat Floaters playlist for August. As usual, it’s a pleasing pool of new and old tunes – all tremendous, and floating our boat this month.
It begins with the unique sound of That’s Why, a 1970s Norwegian Christian jazz group. The eponymous album is well worth a listen, but the weird, wonky and etherial Children of the Future Age is our favourite. We first discovered That’s Way a decade ago, when Jazzman re-released the record, but it has been swirling around, haunting us, recently – funny how music can do that.
There is plenty of fresh goodness to sample, including (South London's finest) Hector Plimmer’s remix of Issac Sasson’s Cantos Campesinos, Rhi’s Swagger – which featured in the New York Times’ weekly playlist – plus Four of Five by the exceptional Khruangbin. In the month the father of bossa nova, Joao Gilberto, died another Brazilian legend – Marcos Valle – launched his latest album. Sempre is exceptionally good, though Avisos aos Navegantes is our pick here.
For the second consecutive month Africa Express features in a Boat Floaters playlist; I Can’t Move features a certain Damon Albarn on vocals. Also of note, Khruangbin label stablemate Ash Walker has released a new album and Under the Sun is a gem among plenty of other jewels.
There are also contributions from a raft of other Boat Floaters regulars: Four Tet; Children of Zeus; Quantic; Guts; Atjazz; and Manu Delago, who continues to take the hang where Portico Quartet did not dare.
Make the most of the sunshine, party people.
Yours in music, Ollie (Boat Floaters)