The Witzard

Jenny Lewis is an Indie Rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actress best known for her work with Rilo Kiley, Jenny & Johnny, and Nice As F**k, as well as The Postal Service and The Watson Twins. David Cohn, better known as Serengeti, is a Chicago-based rapper, who has always seemingly teetered on the fringe of Indie Rock. In addition to his vast body of work as both Serengeti & Kenny Dennis, Cohn has collaborated with the likes of Renee-Louise Carafice & Tony Trimm as Yoome, Son Lux and Sufjan Stevens as Sisyphus (and S / S / S,) Yoni Wolf (WHY?) as Yoni & Geti, Matthewdavid as Davis, Workaholics' Anders Holm as PERFECTO! Advance Base, TOBACCO, and Child Actor. Earlier this year, Serengeti released an album titled The Gentle Fall largely based around sampled guitar loops from Christian Lee Hutson and his latest album, With Greg from Deerhoof, is just that: 8-9 songs recorded with Greg Saunie from Deerhoof. Now, as you may have guessed from the aforementione d...

2018 YEAR IN REVIEW <MIXTAPE> by Illuminated Paths and Broken Machine Films presents... Joshua Rogers (@pathilluminated) otherwise known as Broken Machine Films Presents... has been creating and banking samples since 2002. He's created over 30 albums utilizing only vintage equipment and medium and practicing the art of cassette-to-cassette manipulation. Broken Machine Films Presents... was recently featured on Memories Overloaded: A Tribute to The Caretaker , Godless America Mixtape Vol. 4, Gorgeous Lights' Latenight , and Bedroom Cassette Masters 1980-89 Volume Nine. Rogers himself attests his "creations have been most associated with like going to a late 70's lo-fi drive-in Grindhouse B-movie double-feature with your main squeeze; putting the listening device on your [car] door and continuing on with your date. Not paying so much attention to what is transpiring on the screen anymore... you have more pressing matters to attend to." Broken Machine Fil...

Easy Ruckus (or "ESY RKS," for short) are a Canadian Acoustic/Blues/Folk band hailing from Golden, British Columbia . While, at one point in time, it consisted of 3-6 members, ESY RKS currently features founding members Landon Bushell & Matt Downie . Matt & Landon , actually, both grew up in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada and oddly enough, attended the same elementary, junior high, and high schools, but didn't really connect until after graduation upon forming Easy Ruckus in 2011. Landon Bushell & Matt Downie have collectively, recorded, produced, and self-released two EP's—entitled Winter, Part 1 and Take Me Away —through 2016-17, after a nearly 3 year-long hiatus; as far back as Summer 2012, Easy Ruckus was holed up in Golden, British Columbia recording their first proper full-length, when Matt accidentally, spilled a cup of coffee across his laptop and the nearly completed album was lost for good. Since then, Matt Downie taught himself how...

Hello world 101 - Vinyl Recording (96Khz-24Bit) by Elektrostal "We started out asking ourselves the question, 'if Daft Punk didn’t originate from France , but rather a dank dystopian nightmare of a Moscow suburb, what would that sound like?'" reads the brief, slightly tongue-in-cheek, description included on Amsterdam -based Retro-Future Elecrtonic a band Elektrostal 's Soundcloud page. Elektrostal consists of self-described "song-writer, agitator & synth whizz" Justin Billinger and "floppy label writer, Atari [engineer], vocals & synth [programmer]" Ferry Ridderhof . Billinger & Ridderhof unleashed their appropriately-titled 7-track debut EP, Hello world 101 on vinyl record and high-quality MP3, FLAC, etc. download as recently as November 11th, 2016; a mere six days later, Elektrostal uploaded a digitized vinyl copy of Hello world 101 , which consists of "a 96 Khz 24-bit recording of the vinyl album with a classic Te...

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...

The Postal Service are what you could call a "guilty pleasure," a band that represents a certain phase in my life, and about as far as I ever delved into Electro-Pop/Emo , thankfully ha. It's Ben Gibbard 's side-project that released one widely-acclaimed album, Give Up (2003), which most fans, including myself, actually prefer more than Death Cab for Cutie . While swirling rumors about a follow-up and band reunion have always gone unrequited, the only thing to really materialize since Give Up is a recently re-released 10th anniversary 2-CD set. Sub Pop even managed to convince Ben Gibbard and in-house producer Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel) to finally reunite for a lengthy 36-date summer tour, along with sometime(s) members Jenny Lewis and Laura Burhenn on background vocals and additional instruments. "A Tattered Line of String" is one of 2 new, previously unreleased tracks included on Give Up: Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition , which is currently avai...