The Witzard

Home Is Where We Start From by Star Slinger Star Slinger is one of the many recording aliases of "hairy music producer/DJ" Darren Williams . He's currently residing in Ljubljana in The Republic of Slovenia (Central Europe) but originally hails from Nottingham, UK . Williams has actively been recording and releasing music as Star Slinger since 2010 and quite honestly, was one of the very first artists, I believe, I ever covered here on The Witzard . I can still vividly remember hearing Star Slinger 's lushly-orchestrated Volume 1 and Remixes 2010 , both released online— Bandcamp was still in its earliest stages—over the Summer of 2010; the latter, featuring unofficial Electronic/Hip-Hop remixes of Deerhunter , Small Black, Rollerskaters , Alpine, and FIVENG tracks. Over the course of the past 8-9 years, Star Slinger has either worked with, remixed, or collaborated with Blackbird Blackbird , Childish Gambino, Dawn Richard AKA D∆WN , Ellie Goulding, Kilo Kis...

" [Class Ring] EP is a fully independent production/release written and produced by myself and a handful of friends. I'm from the Los Angeles area, always made music, mostly was a drummer in bands and within the past couple years, have made the jump from making beats on my laptop to producing my own music and eventually, putting out this project. I definitely have plans to continue working and releasing music. Hopefully, some live shows, if I can book them and get some people that want to listen haha," Class Ring producer and multi-instrumentalist "Spencer" described within a recent emaile. Prior to his very recently released Class Ring EP , Spencer had only uploaded two projects to his newly-formed Soundcloud page: 13-minute Summer Mixtape and "Crafty," both quietly released within the last 1-2 months. Class Ring EP is fittingly tagged on Soundcloud as " Trip Hop , Ambient, Downtempo , Hip Hop, Chillwave , Beats, Sample , Drum & ...

"No question! My objective for the song and why I named it "Bakkah" is because Bakkah refers to the Kaaba in Mecca , which is considered the "House of God," in a sense. In the song though, I'm referring to how people relate to one another as being our "house" that is faulty and shaky; barely standing, but nonetheless, is," Hamilton, Ontario, Canada emcee Emay (Mubarik Gyenne Adams) wrote within an emailed statement sent exclusively to The Witzard earlier today. "This new song, "Bakkah: The History of Humankind," was initially just a poem about humanity as a whole. When it began to rhyme, I basically just ran with it. It was also a great opportunity for me to experiment with my writing, as I was always self-conscious about using a more poetic/metaphorical style of writing, so with this track I allowed myself to get completely lost in that form," Adams continued. "Bakkah" stems from his long-rumored S...

The Roots became Jimmy Fallon 's in-house band [comedic relief] when Late Night originally kicked off back in 2009. All the while, they've still somehow managed to produce 2 studio albums (How I Got Over & undun) , as well as supply session work for John Legend , Duffy, Booker T. D'Angelo , and the late Amy Winehouse . ?uestlove recently became little Blue Ivy 's godfather and started a road-side food service truck, "Quest Loves Food." Since re-discovering this new-found sense of fame that came along with their 13th full-length album, The Roots have been asked to curate 2 separate yearly festivals: The Roots Picnic and July 4th Jam (Philly). One of the first BIG festivals of Summer [concert] season, The 5th Annual Roots Picnic is actually taking place this upcoming weekend - June 2 & 3rd. The Legendary Roots Crew will be playing a full "solo" set, backing De La Soul , and re-creating Paid In Full with Eric B. & Rakim ; They al...

"Evian Christ" is a mysterious, young British music producer who randomly uploaded a handful of promising tracks to YouTube over the weekend; In fact, 8 sample-based instrumentals were uploaded to the newly-created account over the course of the past few days. Dummy notoriously posted about Evian Christ & "drip" when it had just 1 mere hit (Dec. 30th) and their accompanying music has since set the blogosphere ablaze! Track titles are mildly cryptic and include: "thrown like jacks," "go girl," and "fridge, crank, gun." Only time will tell who "Evian Christ" really is and what's truly in store for him/her. But based solely off all of this recent media attention, I can only image that it will imminently result in the signing of a major label deal. If KREAYSHAWN can get a $1 million deal/1.5 million hits, then I'm sure that Evian Christ can manage to get some sort of semi-size-able deal off all this web-gen...

When Matthew Arnold penned "The Buried Life" (98-line poem) way back in 1852, I'm sure he never imagined that his compiled works words would still be inspiring young people some 160 years later, in 2012. The present-day incarnation of "The Buried Life" is made up of 4 Canadian -bred friends [brothers]: Ben, Jonnie , Duncan & Dave . Armed with nothing more than a rudimentary cam-corder, a purple bus named "Penelope," and a grandiose vision - The guys set forth on a mission to help the hard-working people of the nation. The crux of Ben, Jonnie, Duncan & Dave's companion MTV series, which originally ran for the length of two 2010 seasons... was to assemble a lengthy bucketlist of "100 things to do before you die." This would, of course, warrant the assistance of many good-hearted, helpful people along the way. For every item crossed off "The Buried Life" crew's list, they promised to assist a newly-befriended st...

A$AP Rocky 's involvement with fellow up-and-comer, Danny Brown 's BRAND NEW "Blunt After Blunt" music video has been long-rumored. While the final cut has finally been liberated, additional rumored friends/collaborators that were set to appear [ Kendrick Lamar , Dave Chappelle , and Mos Def Yasiin Bey ] are noticeably absent. A$AP Rocky's directorial debut is executed surprisingly well: Dark undertones, vivid color use-age, simplicity! "Blunt After Blunt" is without a doubt one of the darker and more effective cuts on XXX - Thanks to SKYWLKR 's lush, dirty production style. Danny Brown is all about repping his hometown of Detroit ... collaborating with as many link-minded D-based artists as possible: Random Axe , Black Milk , SKYWLKR, Dilla (R.I.P.), House Shoes, Rosalinda Ruiz, hexmurda , etc. Both Danny Brown and A$AP Rocky have a few solid outputs currently on the market: Black & Brown EP, XXX , and LIVELOVEA$AP - respectively. A r...

Riding on the coat-tails of Drake 's recent sophomore slump Take Care (700,000 units), Manchester beatsmith Star Slinger has now liberated a re-mixed and re-mastered take on "Over My Dead Body." Darren Williams released his very own Jetlag Edit of the recent album's opening cut @ Soundcloud over the weekend. For the most part, "DRAKE RMX" keeps the original track's integrity fully intact; Star Slinger appropriately accents "Over My Dead Body," with his signature vocal samples, Electronic bleeps and blips, MPC touches, etc. All the while, keeping a good amount of Drake's cadence and Boom Bap Hip-Hop feel there, too - The sole purpose of a solid remix: Nostalgia. Star Slinger 's proper label debut, "Dumbin'" [-feat. Reggie B. ] is now available, via Green Label Sound .

The art of compiling and releasing cast off left-overs and B-sides has been a long-standing tradition in both Hip-Hop and Indie music; Pivotal to their natural progressions, since concurrently forming back in the 1980's. Hip-Hop artists and fans widely refer to the practice as the "mixtape:" A release which generally complies unclear-able samples and nearly-completed left-over tracks. Promotional tool used around the time of album release(s). Now, Indie Rock artists and devotees commonly refer to the medium as "mix CD [tape]:" More of a fan-run thing, mix CD's are often burned for a love interest and usually posses a running theme or mood. UPDATE: The "apocalyptic" date, 11/11/11 did in fact approach and complete. So, that means that Small Black - MOON KILLER (mixtape) was liberated earlier this morning. Yadda, yadda , yadda... Direct download link. This includes 2 Heems features, Nick Minaj-Carpenters samples, Star Slinger-Phonetag R...