Baalti is San Francisco-based duo Mihir Chauhan and Jaiveer Singh. They recently sent me a couple of songs from their 2021 self-titled record, and it’s perfect music for beginning the summer. Chauhan and Singh describe Baalti as an expression of their love of sample-based music, and a forum for recontextualizing the sounds they grew up hearing as kids. It does just that. Reimagining old Bengali disco and Gujarati funk records as straightforward organic house music, Baalti does well not to over-process these precious samples — if the ingredients are great, why mess with them too much?

“Aame” turns Gujarati funk into effective modern house; “Kolkata ’78” flips a classic Rupa Biswas record into shuffling percussive disco-house. The whole EP is worth checking out, and will work as well on a dancefloor as it will soundtracking your next summer cookout. Available now for streaming, or on bandcamp.

Baalti – “Aame” (sc)

Baalti – “Kolkata ’78” (sc)