The Witzard

Lushlife (Rajesh "Raj" Haldar) has long been one of our favorite emcees/producers here at The Witzard. We've been closely paying attention to and following his career since about 2005 upon the release of his Kanye West/Beach Boys mash-up mixtape, West Sounds . Lushlife has since let loose a gaggle of genre-defying releases including, but not limited to, collaborations with Ariel Pink, Killer Mike, CSLSX, Cities Aviv, STS, Dice Raw, Heems, Zilla Rocca, Sad13, R. Stevie Moore, Kevin D'Mello (Fakevinyl, Forevertron,) Camp Lo, eLZhi, billy woods, Moor Mother, John Morrison, and Khruangbin. As you can see, Lushlife has always comfortably teetered the fine line in-between Hip-Hop/Indie Rock; a prime example of this being "In Soft Focus" from Lushlife's 2009 effort, Cassette City, credits Rajesh Haldar with backing vocals/turntables, drums from Kyle Cedermark, primary features from Ariel Pink & eLZhi, and production from Lushlife himself. Lushlife...

"A penumbra is the space between the shade and the light of a partial eclipse, the area that is neither blacked-out nor illuminated fully. More broadly, the word is defined as something that surrounds or enshrouds a region or object. Like this twilit fringe between being and non-being, the production of Spencer Stephenson—known for his output under the name Botany—gives shape and circumference to The Skull Eclipses' self-titled debut .​ PENUMBRAS lays bare that album's hybrid scaffolding of ambient Boom-Bap, dubby Jungle, and hauntological sample-collage revealing a multi-faceted beat tapestry unadorned by lead-vocals, standing alone as a full-length listening experience. On ​October 26th,​ Western Vinyl is releasing ​PENUMBRAS by ​The Skull Eclipses​, an album of beats and previously unreleased pieces from the self-titled collaborative debut of producer Spencer Stephenson (​Botany​) and rapper Raj Haldar (​Lushlife​) that featured Laraaji, Open Mike Eagle, and many othe...

"Nosh Lately?": A Tribute to The Beasties Boys' "Hello Nasty" from D.A. Stern & Jacuzzi Boys by D.A. Stern " D.A. Stern , the solo project of David Aaron Stern , is the musical amalgamation of crossword puzzle obsession, Backgammon playing, and working as a recording engineer at Beastie Boy Adam "MCA" Yauch 's studio," read a March 2017 Force Field PR press email. The Jacuzzi Boys AKA The JB's , on the other hand, according to their Facebook page, were "hatched inside a vulture's nest [and soon] emerged from deep within the Florida wilds, three radioactive chicks cawing for their piece of Electric Rock pie." It appears as though D.A. Stern & Jacuzzi Boys first worked together back in June 2017 on the latter's PING PONG REMIXED , wherein Stern provided a hedgehog-themed remix of "New Cross" from Ping Pong released on The JBs' own Mag Mag imprint the previous October. Now, as many of y...