The Witzard

"Back in the 90's, when I first got on the phone with Biz Markie, he told me he had a 7-inch of my favorite Donovan song, "Get Thy Bearings," with an instrumental flip. "Why did you rap over the vocal on "I Told You?'" I asked. "I sampled the instrumental and put the vocals back in because it sounded better," was his reply. Four years after that conversation, I worked with @danube_productions [The Sand Dollars] and we actually, created a "Get Thy Bearings" A/B-side combo, as The Biz described, in homage to one of the greatest record collectors Hip-Hop produced. As deep as Biz is, though, he didn't have Apple & The Three Oranges' LA über-rarity, "Moon Light," one of my dude Madlib's favorite Soul songs. Mine, too. It's one of @cutchemist's, too. He and Biz made a song around it for his latest album [Die Cut]. Peep his Bio for more info. "Moon Light! Clear skies!" Love that sh*t....

"The Audience's Following is a 10-year anniversary fan club edition version of The Audience's Listening. I like to call this the bizzaro version follow-up to [The Audience's Listening], as it features songs that never made the cut and demo versions of songs that did. There are also B-sides from vinyl singles, plus a special mix of the original song sampled for "What's The Altitude" by Curtis Knight[-Zeus] . Have fun listening to the album that was almost released 10 years ago. It's the follow-up and the audience is still following and listening and... whatever else," world-renowned DJ Lucas "Cut Chemist" Macfadden wrote within a short 7/11 Bandcamp description attached to The Audience's Following. Now, I don't mean to get all fanboy here, but I've been actively wishing and working on scoring an interview with Cut Chemist for about 3-5 years now; I can remember purchasing Jurassic 5, Cut's on-again off-again and recently...

Brainfreeze 45 extraordinaire and Jurassic 5 DJ Cut Chemist was temporarily locked up for unspecified reasons in recent years, but now he's back with a long-awaited new [compilation] album, Funk Off ; partially previewed during "an excellent mix for the Stones Throw Podcast called Cassette Culture using four cassette decks and tracks from a release he was working on called Funk Off ," it's a quasi-collaboration with 1980's French New-Wave groups Vox Populi! & Pacific 231 . Cut Chemist unleashed two non-album singles leading up to Funk Off 's October 29th release, "Outro (Revisited)" and "Work My Mind." The latter is essentially a re-imagining/remix of [Vox Populi!] album track "Alternative Fresh," which features select verses by Jurassic 5 frontman Chali 2na and Hymnal . "Work My Mind" is more or less a self-described "future-primitive analogue thriller," complete with a music video directed ...

Cut Chemist has remained fairly quiet since parting ways with long-time Hip-Hop crew, Jurassic 5 (2006). Currently readying his first solo album in roughly 6 years - Die Cut , Cut Chemist apparently spent some time holed up in a jail cell semi-recently. Somewhat fittingly then, Lucas MacFadden 's premier track back is a frantic-paced, Punk -inspired Hip-Hop DJ jam; For "Outro (Revisited)," Cut Chemist assembled a pretty solid pick-up band featuring members of The Mars Volta and Weapon of Choice , Deantoni Parks and Lonnie Marshall . Veteran underground MC, Blackbird steps in to handle vocal duties... Cut Chemist may still be best known for his legendary 7" record-scratching magnum opus with DJ Shadow : Brainfreeze , which has been heavily bootlegged since it's 1999 limited release. While Die Cut is currently without a concrete release date, "Outro (Revisited)" was issued as a 12" single back on April 10th. The best interpretation ...