The Witzard

" The Du-Rites finally drop a full song to check out. "Bug Juice" now on Soundcloud (who are a bunch of squares a bunch of squares and simps for not having a "Funk" option in their genre drop[-down] menu, but "Trap" is available). To hear: my website link in bio - newest post or soundcloud.com/thedurites . 7-inch single later next month; album late Fall," multi-instrumentalist and Hip-Hop producer Jay "J-Zone" Mumford wrote within a recent aptly-titled @jzonedontig Instagram post. Still hot on the heels of his latest solo album, Fish-n-Grits , which is made up of a gaggle of limited edition vinyl-only 7-inch releases dating as far back as 2014 and new material, J-Zone has readied "probably the closest to what [he] aspired to in my Funk-drenched 80's childhood" in the form of a newly-minted 2-man Funk band, fittingly titled The Du-Rites . J-Zone is currently preparing a 7-inch Funk instrumental EP with his lon...

"With the blessing of my Fool's Gold family by my side, I'm excited to be working with Warp [Records] on new material. They're music fans to the same high degree I am and I'm looking forward to breaking some rules together," frantic Detroit -bred emcee Danny Brown recounted within a brief statement released along with his latest single, "When It Rain." Nearly mere hours after its Tuesday night reveal, Brown appeared on revered Beats 1 Radio DJ Zane Lowe 's web-series; "it's actually even better! Shout out to [Mimi Cave] , man- she really just made my vision come to life... I really got the idea from this Talking Heads documentary that I saw and I was really into that, so I wanted ["When It Rain"] to look like that," Danny Brown divulged when Lowe inquired if Cave's video treatment came out like he had imagined. Brown continued that his still currently untitled album was heavily influenced by a book penned abo...

"It started out as an attempt to write an early Bob Dylan kind of song, but as I wrote it, I heard Tom Waits in my head. It ended up sounding like a cover of Talking Heads covering Waits and Dylan, I think," Ray St. Ray somewhat unsurely wrote in a batch of exclusive emailed pull-quotes sent directly to The Witzard ; although, it's a rather bold, yet befitting description of The Singing Cab Driver 's zany Cabaret -leaning "WRONG SIDE OF ENOUGH." "Over the last 40 years, our future was stolen by corporate interests. Now, too many people are on the wrong side of enough. I feel strongly about this. It's what my concept album, FUTUREMAN vs. THE WRONG SIDE OF ENOUGH is about," Ray's email passionately continued. I initially heard about the infamous Singing Cab Driver a few months ago through my friend, crate-digger extraordinaire, and Now-Again Records founder, Egon . He spoke of one particularly interesting Madlib -accompanied late nig...

While I've never really been a humongous (read: "huge") Band of Horses fan, I can still however, respect their niche singer-songwriter aesthetic, and I can still remember the first time I heard their flawless modern day Folk-Indie Rock "power-ballad," "The Funeral:" on an episode of MTV 's ill-fated pseudo-reality series, My Life As Liz , which Kid Cudi would later go on to expertly sample and rhyme atop on his A Kid Named Cudi mixtape. Around the same time, I can also recall first hearing soft-spoken bearded singer-songwriter, Iron & Wine aka Sam Beam 's critically-acclaimed mariachi-tinged In The Reins EP (2005) recoded with Tex-Mex Indie Folk band, Calexico ; Iron & Wine would gain wide-spread notoriety with his stripped down cover of The Postal Service 's "Such Great Heights" that would go on to appear on both the Garden State soundtrack and within a kaleidoscopic M&M's commercial . "I did a r...

Shouts to critically-acclaimed Hip-Hop producer, Just Blaze for bravely stepping into unknown, spray tan-glazed new territory; His latest genre-blending masterpiece, "BEHOLD! (Exhibit J)" was released online Wednesday afternoon. While it may come to a surprise to quite a few Hip-Hop heads, Just Blaze has been fucking around with House music for a little under 10 years now. While he wasn't producing countless hits for Jay-Z , Ghostface Killah, Saigon , Busta Rhymes, and Jay Electronica ... he managed to sneak in a few Hip-House influenced tracks: Cajmere Remix, Joe Budden - "Pump It Up," unreleased Rah Digga , and "Exhibit G, F & P" [Guido Fist Pump]. It sounds like Just Blaze ran into Fool's Gold label-head/resident DJ, A-Trak @ a holiday party a few years back, who's now gearing up to unleash his debut House EP. "Exhibit J" is a rough, NEAR[LY] FINAL cut that won't be featured on the EP, but you get th...

Love This Giant , the long-rumored brass-based collaborative album from St. Vincent (Annie Clark) and former Talking Heads frontman, David Byrne is finally slated for a September 11th release on 4AD/Todo Mundo . Having randomly met @ a 2009 Dirty Projectors & Björk benefit show... Clark and Byrne were later approached to orchestrate a similar concert for Housing Works , to which David Byrne adamantly replied, "Why don't we [just] go ahead and record these and make it an album!?" After roughly 2 1/2 years of tinkering between their own solo albums, Love This Giant is finally good and ready for a wide-spread unveiling. Material was jointly co-written/recorded by both St. Vincent & David Byrne , with production assistance from John Congleton , and horn-aided backing from The Dap-Kings AND Antibalas . The album will be composed of 12 original tracks and accompanied by a Fall mini-tour spanning across the United States and Canada . First single, "Who?...

"Blue Chips" is an off-the-cuff, spontaneous project that started as a vibe session one Winter afternoon... and spiraled into a 17-song dusted journey through the warped comedic minds of Action Bronson and the prodigy producer/artist known simply as Party Supplies . This journey includes appearances by Roc Marci, Meyhem Lauren , and Das Racist and was recorded in the confines of Party Supplies' Williamsburg, [Brooklyn] chalet. It's a "project," as opposed to a mixtape or an album and sits in a nether world somewhere between the two. Most of all, it's a moment in time made [during] a 3-week period of hanging out at Party Supplies' house. In between cheese plates, snaps and spliffs the 2 artists came up with this testament of creativity and spontaneity! #March12th - Reebok Classics