Our calendar girl, Big AL, is a little pressed with midterms just now, so you’ve gotta make your own fun until Friday. Blame it on Obama.

In the meantime, I want to share with you a neat project that’s coming out of UNC Chapel Hill, just in case you might be interested.  The music department there offers a 3-credit class in beat making. That in itself is pretty enviable, but their course, Beat Making Lab, is only a building block for spreading open source beat making software and education across Africa and the global south. The link above leads to a 3-minute video about what they’re doing.

Also, Funny / Not Funny Records is releasing a new 12″ 45 from Invisible Hand, who sound as good, if not gooder than ever.  It’s available on pre-order and, as troo fans prolly already know, early birds enter a raffle for a test pressed worm. For those who have subjected themselves to the caprices of chance one too many times, there is a free summer mix-tape from (: / ):. It features such favorites as Borrowed Beams of Light, Lux Perpetua, and The Young Sinclairs, as well as some doodles you may not have heard of.

Art for Aja, the Hand's latest