The Witzard

"I landed in London on my way to meet up with the Madlib Medicine [Show] Tour and had one goal in mind upon de-planing: FIND IF Music! I had read about the proprietor, Jean-Claude Thompson, in a Wax Poetics article and heard from multiple sources that for my tastes, this was THE shop to hit. Upon arriving, I was surprised to find the dapper owner hanging out on the street, seemingly there to welcome me, since the shop [was] on the second floor. After watching me devour the stacks, the dapper owner said, "do you listen to new music?" "Yes, I do," [I replied]. His first recommendation was a new Jazz record from some young musicians in Poland. And that was how I discovered EABS the old-fashioned way, by a recommendation from one of the most knowledgeable selectors on the planet. A week later I opened Repetitions [Letters to Krzysztof Komeda] a beautiful double-album package with an in-depth insert and dropped Side 1 on the turntable. What I discovered ...

Music really is a powerful entity that connects people across the world every day, as cliché as it sounds. Case in point: I think I first discovered Donuts-flipping Kiwi Basement Funk pioneer Jeremy Toy , who records as Leonard Charles, whilst scrolling through live screen-printing crate diggers HIT+RUN's Instagram page. Leonard Charles' phenomenal Basement Donuts, in turn, pointed me in the direction of Indian Classical band Jaubi's Stones Throw-highlighted "Time: Donut of The Heart" cover... now, are you still with me? Jaubi recently re-released their The Deconstructed Ego EP on Poland & London-based Astigmatic Records and the Hip-Hop and Jazz-melding collective spotlighted within this very piece, Electro-Acoustic Beat Sessions (EABS), are their Astigmatic Records label mates! "The first single from the album Repetitions is the song, "Waltzing Beyond," which was first released on vinyl by Columbia Records in Germany, thanks to the influence o...