The Witzard

It's been widely reported this past Friday's 24-hour Bandcamp Friday festivities garnered $7.1 million, all of which went directly to the artists waiving the company's own revenue shares. Yesterday, we ran a feature on a collection of our favorite beat tapes released on or around Bandcamp Friday and today, we're going to do something similar, but with mixtapes. Now, these aren't exactly your typical rapper, producer, or DJ-orchestrated mixtapes... these are uniquely non-Hip-Hop "mixtapes" orchestrated and released by a few of our favorite Punk/Hardcore bands, DOPE BODY, F*CKED UP, and Titus Andronicus. For Bandcamp Friday, a newly-reunited DOPE BODY released an album/mixtape called Home Body, F*CKED UP issued their MIXTAPE 6, and Titus Andronicus uploaded Sorry About The Delay: Titus Andronicus LLC Mixtape, Volume 2A, A Reductive Scoff: Titus Andronicus LLC Mixtape, Volume III, and Broken Down In Morgantown: Titus Andronicus LLC Mixtape, Volume 4 (An Aste...

Joseph William "Will" Oldham is a musician, singer-songwriter, and actor, likely, better known as Bonnie "Prince" Billy (B.P.B.) Oldham is widely known for his D.I.Y. Punk aesthetic and blunt honesty and his musical output has often been likened to Americana, Folk, Roots, Country, Punk, and Indie Rock. B.P.B. has been called an "Appalachian Post-punk Solipsist" with a grizzly whiskey-soaked voice that has been described as "a fragile sort-of warble frittering around haunted melodies in the American Folk or Country tradition" by Chris Baldwin at The Wanderer. Will Oldham has been actively releasing, often self-releasing, music since 1993 (since '98 as Bonnie "Prince" Billy ) under the assorted aliases Admiral Wiley Balls , High & Blue, Little Willy Bulgakov , Palace/Palace Brothers, Pushkin Will , Tusitala de las Olas, and Wayne Olephant . Oldham has performed with a number of bands, including Amalgamated Sons of Rest , B*tc...

"We are excited to announce that a new Joanna Newsom song was released this morning! Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson ," read an uncharacteristically serious Tweet from GRAMMY -winning Comedy-Rap triumvirate @thelonelyisland , which just so happens to showcase the rhymin' talents of Newsom's husband, Andy Samburg . While I'm vaguely familiar with Joanna Newsom 's beautifully fragile harp-assisted melodies, I'm gonna be completely honest here: the only time I've ever actually "heard" her music was on Asher Roth & Nottz Raw 's reflective "Sprout & The Bean" -sampling RAWTH EP cut, "Break Bread." Newsom's first album in nearly five years, Divers , features lush string arrangement composed by "a total murders' row: Newsom [herself], Nico Muhly , Dirty Projectors frontman Dave Longstreth , and Ryan Francesconi ," as Stereogum reports. Divers' string arrangements were additionally record...

Alright, full disclosure: I've been in top secret email transmission with Baltimore -based Noise-Rock band Dope Body since around mid-April and I've been fully aware that they were planning to drop an album's-worth of new material around September/October, too; that album, now titled LIFER , is currently slated for an October 23rd release on Drag City Records . While I'm not entirely sure if I discovered Dope Body 's last album, Natural History (2012) or drummer David Jacober 's solo cassette, Water Karaoke first, I guess my initial interaction with the band was a fateful 14-question interview conducted with Jacober a few years ago. LIFER was recorded back in January 2014 after roughly 19 months of non-stop touring behind Natural History , following a brief hiatus to work on the members' outer-band outlets: Nerftoss , Player Press, Holy Ghost Party! and frontman Andrew Laumann 's gallery-displayed visual art exhibits. Drag City further describ...

It's pretty damn AMAZING that Dope Body are prepping their sixth EP-LP release, considering the sheer fact that the band was initially assembled for a one-off gig @ Baltimore 's Natural History museum (2008). Drag City will unleash Saturday 7" tomorrow, March 19th; It's positioned to out-sell Justin Timberlake 's return to form, The 20/20 Experience ha. Serving as a quasi-follow-up to last year's Natural History , "Leather Head" was plucked straight off Saturday (Side A) . Four horsemen Andrew Laumann, David Jacober, Zachary "Zeke" Utz , and new bassist John Jones star in "Leather Head"'s stark black-and-white music video. Director Sheena Callage did her best to harness the band's righteous Black Flag meets Rage Against The Machine Hardcore/Noise-Rock vibe. Callage managed to create a very simple, yet highly effective treatment: Dope Body rockin' out in an empty performance space inter-spliced with face-mo...

Ty Segall is a San Francisco -bred Garage-Psych Rocker who's recording output is similar to say... The Beatles . Since bursting on the music scene in 2006, Segall has released a countless, varied array of albums with different groups and on the solo T.I.P. 2010's Melted (Goner Records) may very well be one of the earliest and most note-worthy solo offerings. A self-proclaimed "rapidly-recording artist," Ty Segall teamed up with buddy, Eric "King Riff" Bauer , chilled out a bit, and slowly recorded Goodbye Bread over a 6 month period. To the best of my knowledge, "Goodbye Bread" is Segall's first officially-sanctioned and produced music video; The title track from an album of the same name, Drag City released Goodbye Bread back on June 24th, 2011... a mere 2 months after they unleashed "Ty-Rex" (Record Store Day) . The result: a simple, single shot, Matt Yoka -directed affair, which chronicles a night out with Ty Segall - as...