Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot Discovery To Benefit Oxfam America

Below is the unedited press release regarding the new Discovery album (blogged previously here) offered one week early to benefit Oxfam America.

New York, NY (June 30, 2009) – Discovery, the band comprised of Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend) and Wes Miles (Ra Ra Riot) have just released their highly anticipated debut as part of Amie Street’s Download To Make A Difference campaign.

LP is now available one week early exclusively on AmieStreet.com at the sale price of $8 in an effort by the group to raise money for Oxfam America.

“I am thrilled to have Oxfam be a part of this release,” said Miles. “Oxfam's focus on broad advocacy and local relief for the impoverished is inspiring and I hope our support brings more awareness about their projects and goals.”

For each album sold, AmieStreet.com and XL Recordings are donating $2 to Oxfam America (www.oxfamamerica.org), an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. Together with individuals and local groups in more than 100 countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice.

Discovery is the recording project of Batmanglij and Miles, friends who began recording together in the summer of 2005. One year later they had committed themselves to their respective bands, Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot, but nonetheless continued to record together when they both found themselves in the same city. The project is many things: it’s partly an attempt to realize Wes’s concept of a band where everyone plays synthesizers, and of Rostam’s concept for an album where handclaps keep the backbeat instead of snare drums.

It’s an embrace and also a commentary on the pop music of the past decade, of booming 808 bass and jittery sixteenth note high-hats. If soul music is secularized, sexualized gospel, Discovery is an attempt to see if soul music can survive being plasticized, roboticized, quantized, chopped, and finally, screwed. The album features Rostam and Wes each singing half the songs and guest vocals from Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend) and Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors).

The exclusive release marks the seventh major release for AmieStreet.com's Download To Make A Difference campaign, which has raised tens of thousands of dollars for organizations like the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Food Bank For New York City, and the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation since its launch ten months ago.

LP is released by XL Recordings (Sigur Rós, Adele, Vampire Weekend). To download the fantastic new album and support Oxfam America go to: http://amiestreet.com/music/discovery/lp