The Witzard

It's Bandcamp Friday once more and like many of you, we woke up to about a hundred new Bandcamp Release Notification emails this morning. Honestly, there are far to many releases out today (and every Bandcamp Friday, for that matter) to spotlight here. Although, there are definitely ways to find and support music from your favorite underground artists, who will be recieving 100% of their total sales today, on Bandcamp today. We're quickly just gonna spotlight two of our personal favorite releases today, which both just go happen to be beat tapes. Run is a new 12-minute mini-beat tape from Baltimore beat-maker Jumbled. Jumbled says, "this project is a showcase of new beats loosely tied together with sound clips from videos and songs releated to The Super Mario [Bros.] This project may disappear down a Warp Pipe in the near future..." Jumbled had been noticing a lot of Super Mario references in songs he's heard recently and wanted to tie them together with som...

Last we heard from Massachusetts' own 80HRTZ, he was producing "The Ghost of Route 44" as part of BRZOWSKI's 2019 odds-and-ends-style comp. BLooddrive, Vol. 4. Prior to that, 80 had produced a full-length album alongside fellow Bay Stater and emcee Purge dubbed WHERE THERE'S SMOKE... However, The Witzard regulars might remember 80HRTZ from his inexplicitly infectious genre-fusing remixes of The Misfits' "Astro Zombies" & Dead Kennedys' "California Über Alles" both premiered right here at The Witzard, respectively, featuring DJ Halo & Shortrock. Now, 80HRTZ has returned with his next similarly-minded remix concocted exclusively for The Witzard: Iron Maiden's fourteenth single, "Wasted Years." Maiden originally released "Wasted Years" in 1986 as the lead-off single from their then-upcoming synth-laden album, Somewhere In Time. 80HRTZ's "Wasted Years" fuses together Iron Maiden's beloved ...

EPIC BEARD MEN (CREDIT: Steve Mitchell) Exactly one year ago today (well, actually, this weekend,) Sage Francis & B. Dolan released their proper full-length debut together as EPIC BEARD MEN entitled This Was Supposed to Be Fun. EPIC BEARD MEN, or just EBM, put together what many, including us, considered one of the strongest and most fun albums of 2019; for the festivities, B. Dolan & Sage Francis brought along a few friends, including Slug from Atmosphere, Blue Raspberry (Wu-Tang Clan,) Vockah Redu, Eligh, and Yugen Blakrok. We were fortunate enough to speak with both Sage Francis & B. Dolan around te time of This Was Supposed to Be Fun's wide release for an exclusive interview here at The Witzard. Today, in honor of said one-year anniversary, Sage Francis' label imprint Strange Famous Records released a special Name-Your-Price remix of EPIC BEARD MEN's "Man Overboard" to help commemorate the occasion. Not exactly a blink-182 remix, as some of you...

Sage Francis & B. Dolan are two Underground/Indie Hip-Hop emcees who have, arguably, achieved as much success as one can within the genre, without "going" Mainstream." It appears as though Sage & B. have always been friends and have been collaborating with each other for years, although, first appeared on-record together in 2012 for the first time dually billed as EPIC BEARD MEN. It was on "2BAD" from B. Dolan's HOUSE OF BEES VOL. 2 MIXED BY: BUDDY PRICE. Since then, B. Dolan & Sage Francis have been loosely collaborating together on-and-off as EPIC BEARD MEN with Dolan releasing countless solo albums on Francis' own label imprint, Strange Famous Records, as well. As recently as 2018, Sage & B. made it "official" releasing their first collaborative project together, Season 1 EP, which contained four Bonus Tracks meticulously tacked onto it's tail-end. Now, EPIC BEARD MEN have returned, exactly one year later, as promis...

Over the course of the past month or so, there have been a plethora of solid Hip-Hop EP's released online; a quick, concise 30-minutes or less format that's seemingly, replaced the mixtape/"street album" format of years passed to become your favorite underground rapper/producer's go-to promotional tool. Here, for this inaugural edition of The Witzard's Rap EP Wrap-up, we'll be profiling eight EP's released throughout March 2018, as well as two released at the end of February that were honestly, way too dope to not include! Featured below, in no particular order, are EP's from the likes of ALASKA & PJ Katz, Elaquent, Epic Beard Men (Sage Francis & B. Dolan,) Luke Sick & Damien *, Madlib & J Dilla's proteges MED AKA Medaphoar & Guilty Simpson, Loretta Records founder Observe, Roughneck Jihad & IL Torsolo *, SULTANS OF SPRING touring mates PremRock & Fresh Kils, and Purple Dialect, as well as a posthumous Illa Ghee-as...

Over the course of the past month or so, there have been a plethora of solid Hip-Hop EP's released online; a quick, concise 30-minutes or less format that's seemingly, replaced the mixtape/"street album" format of years passed to become your favorite underground rapper/producer's go-to promotional tool. Here, for this inaugural edition of The Witzard's Rap EP Wrap-up, we'll be profiling eight EP's released throughout March 2018, as well as two released at the end of February that were honestly, way too dope to not include! Featured below, in no particular order, are EP's from the likes of ALASKA & PJ Katz, Elaquent, Epic Beard Men (Sage Francis & B. Dolan,) Luke Sick & Damien *, Madlib & J Dilla's proteges MED AKA Medaphoar & Guilty Simpson, Loretta Records founder Observe, Roughneck Jihad & IL Torsolo *, SULTANS OF SPRING touring mates PremRock & Fresh Kils, and Purple Dialect, as well as a posthumous Illa Ghee-as...

Justin Timberlake released his long-awaited fifth studio album, Man of The Woods today, which has taken him "back to his Nashville roots," as well as his pre- Timbaland production partners, The Neptunes . This upcoming Sunday, Timberlake will also make his return to Super Bowl LII , playing his first half-time show since 2004's Super Bowl XXXVIII half-time show controversy, widely regarded as "Nipplegate." "When it was announced JT would return to the Super Bowl , after spectacularly failing to stand by [Janet] Jackson at the height of his career, it started bugging me more," one half of Epic Beard Men , B. Dolan wrote on Soundcloud early Friday morning. "I started out to make a single one of these mash-ups out of curiosity. Then, I kept going because I'm petty and a music nerd and it was stunningly easy," @BDolanSFR continued. B. Dolan is of course, referring to his "dope, highly unofficial 30-minute satirical mix"...

Let's just get right into it: it's that special time of year where everyone readily flaunts their holiday cheer for everyone to hear! Jingle Bell Rocks! director and Christmas record collector Mitchell Kezin (@mabooshi) curated an especially festive mix full of Alt. Christmas songs, Hanukkah hymns, and obscure holiday jams entitled Mitchell's 'SOUL SISTA' Holiday Mix for The Witzard . Thanks again to Mitchell for sharing his special brand of holiday cheer and a very special thanks goes out to The Ologiest AKA JD at Common Good Records —his old imprint, When Crates Create combined with Analog Burners . In addition to my personal 2017 holiday favorite, Jumbled's Christmas comp. Merry Christmess , there has been quite the influx of festive musical cheer spread by your favorite musicians, emcees, and producers just in time for your last-minute shopping and wrapping sessions. Now, without further ado, I'm proud to present to you: The Witzard 's 2017...