The Witzard

A MIXTAPE FROM BEN LEE by BEN LEE "This album began as an exploration of songwriting. I decided to write songs for different voices, and invite these singers to perform them. My dear friend Sam Spiegel (Squeak E. Clean) offered to produced the record I had conceptualized, and we began working on the collaboration in earnest in 1998," Ben Lee recently wrote in a long-form message on his newly-launched Bandcamp page. A MIXTAPE FROM BEN LEE is more of a "mixtape" in the loose sense of the term; leaning more towards the direction of a 90's radio-to-cassette mix(ed)tape, rather than a modern-day Hip-Hop loosies promotional collection. Spiegel self-describes the 11-track project as "the first album that [he] ever produced over 10 years ago," which boasts vocal appearances from Zooey Deschanel , Empire of The Sun frontman Luke Steele, former The Bens bandmate Ben Folds , Sean Lennon, Azure Ray , The Cardigans songstress Nina Persson, and Gelbison , ...

"Die Young" is a mildly apocalyptic, sugar-coated "dance til we die" jam along with some half-assed satanic rituals/pseudo-orgy-tinged visuals... complete with that inherent layer of Hipster sleaze and over-produced shitty-ness. Ke$ha 's your typical she'd-be-hot-if-she-showered-more-often kinda dirty [blonde] girl; But I must say, she's really cleaned up a lot since first bursting onto the music scene with Animal/Cannibal EP (2010). Nate Ruess , who scored 2+ MAJOR hits this year with fun. , helped Ke$ha co-write "Die Young" and Dr. Luke, Benny Blanco , and Cirkut all had a hand in the production end of the Electro-Acoustic hybrid track. Ke$ha 's second album, Warrior , is slated for a December 4th release and will also include a handful of note-worthy appearances from Iggy Pop , Wayne Coyne, Ben Folds , will.i.am , and Patrick Carney (The Black Keys). Like I was starting to say up there, before some debonair young fellow r...

The Roots, Carly Rae Jepsen , and Jimmy Fallon managed to orchestrate a pretty unique/endearing take on "Call Me Maybe." Shot backstage @ Studio 8B before Thursday's taping, it vaguely reminds me of Ben Folds' cover of "Such Great Heights" (Postal Service) that was released just a few years ago. In an un-usually crafty turn of events, Carly Rae Jepsen & Late Night Band somehow re-appropriate "Call Me Maybe"'s central melody and Pop -tinged hook on a gaggle of common classroom instruments: triangle, ukelele, tambourine, xylophone, bongo drums, kazoo, "recorder," afro pick, etc. Jepsen was essentially discovered online by Justin Bieber and now has a #1 hit single for Scooter Braun 's record label, Schoolboy [Interscope] . Grab a copy of Carly Rae Jepsen 's Curiosity EP and stay tuned for a full-length album, while Jimmy Fallon 's new star-studded comedy record, Blow Your Pants Off is out Tuesday (June 12th).