The Witzard

Rock "N" Roll and quite arguably, music as a whole lost one of its most charismatic, uniquely individual, and beloved figureheads when David Jones aka The Thin White Duke aka Ziggy Stardust , otherwise known as the one and only David Bowie unexpectedly passed away early Sunday morning, January 10th, amongst the company of dear family and friends following an 18-month battle with cancer. I'm not even going to attempt to write a fully fleshed-out obituary to Bowie, hands down one of my all-time favorite performers since I was about 12, but I figured I would at least assemble a few of my thoughts and feelings into an all-too-brief hand-written tribute; a proper David Bowie obituary can be viewed over at Stereogum , which was written by Tom Breihan and served as a loose structural basis for this very piece. Throughout the course of his storied and ever-developing 52-year career, Bowie released some 28 genre-blending studio albums, produced one of the most critically-ac...

"+ fyi - every song on this album is a completely different style, so ["flesh without blood"] isn't a 'representation' of everything, just a taste of a vibe," @Grimezsz recently revealed on Twitter following the unexpected premier of her first Art Angels double-singe, "Flesh Without Blood/Life In The Vivid Dream." Grimes' long-awaited and previously scrapped follow-up to her critically-acclaimed album Visions (2012) has rather interestingly been described by Claire Boucher herself as: "it's all "real instruments," half of the tracks are diss tracks, there's a Nu-Metal track with a Taiwanese rapper, the whole thing was inspired by Billy Joel , there's a song about a gender-fluid vampire Al Pacino ," of course, paraphrased and reinterpreted a bit by the good people over at Stereogum . On the heels of "Flesh Without Blood" & "Life In The Vivid Dream," Grimes called in BBC Ra...

Los Angeles sister act HAIM have indeed dabbled with Hip-Hop in the past, whether it be nearly getting recruited as A$AP Rocky 's backing band or appearing on genre-blending Kid Cudi and Childish Gambino tracks... But now they've enlisted rising A$AP Mob emcee, A$AP Ferg to append a ferocious add-on verse to their Days Are Gone album stand-out, "My Song 5." It's not entirely unlike a visual Where's Waldo? of seemingly everyone Danielle, Este & Alana Haim have encountered or befriended while on the road over the last couple years; featured emcee A$AP Ferg , Ke$ha, Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig , Grimes, Big Sean , SNL comedian Vanessa Bayer, Mama & Papa Haim , producer Ariel Rechtshaid, and even "Artemis" from It's Always Sunny . Leading up to it's Tuesday afternoon release, @HAIMtheband's long-rumored "My Song 5" video was subtly teased with cleverly edited 90's screen-grabs from Sally Jessy Ra...

"It's our summer jam, so we figured we should put it out, cuz I am very bored of waiting to finish my album [before] releasing new music haha," Grimes (real name Claire Boucher ) said in a recent press release. Last winter, Boucher signed what some might call a mildly head-scratching management deal with Jay Z 's own Roc-Nation off-shoot company — alongside previous signees HAIM , M.I.A. Santigold , Mark Ronson, Shakira , Wale, and The Ting Tings . Grimes and her fellow Canadian comrade/frequent collaborator Blood Diamonds were reportedly commissioned by Roc-Nation to produce and original track for R&B super-star Rihanna . While it was ultimately rejected by the Roc-Nation team, Grimes & Blood Diamonds recently recorded their own version of the track, now re-titled "Go." Blood Diamonds' 2010-12 reminiscent Dubstep/Electro -leaning production work seems to have been influenced by Grimes' former Full Flex Express touring mates, ...

Fresh on the heels of collaborative full-length albums with Omar Souleyman and Neneh Cherry , Post-Rock and Electronic multi-instrumnetalist Four Tet (Kieran Hebden) unleashed about 10-15 tracks upon hitting 100,000+ Twitter followers Monday evening; "let me go through the hard drives and see what's there..." The bulk of the tracks included on what we'll just call Twitter 100k CD-R , for the sake of convenience, were all written-recorded between 1999-2012, according to Hebden's calculations. Four Tet then continued to liberate a generous batch of rarities and unheard remixes, which includes but isn't limited to solo fragments, on-again-off-again pseudo-band Percussions , and Welsh musician David Wrench , as well as a Grimes re-work and separate Atoms for Peace and Gravediggaz remixes. "gravediggaz SID rmx 2000" is a slightly glitched-out remix of "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide" from their 1994 Horror-core debut record, 6 Fee...

I just turned 25 a few months ago, but " Tumblr rappers" like kitty pryde really make me feel like a terribly out-of-touch old man! Thanks to my older cousins, I was raised on a steady diet of Wu-Tang Clan , No Doubt, Beastie Boys , Blink-182, Now #1-5 , Red Hot Chili Peppers , Biggie, Sublime , etc. The 20-year-old, freckle-faced songstress manages to shout out " CHEETAH GIRLS , HILLARY DUFF, JUSTIN BIEBER , S-CLUB 7, ATOMIC KITTEN & CLAIRE'S INC." on her Facebook Influences section; AKA a bunch of 90's-bred shit that I'd really be surprised if she was actually influenced by, cause I was about 11 in 1998 (S-Club 7) , but maybe. Bottom line, a lot of kitty 's [sarcastic] Tumblr-fied inside jokes and punchlines fly right over my head. I guess that 5-year age gap really does make a difference sometimes! Like what's up with all these weird acronyms? - D.A.I.S.Y. Rage EP and R.R.E.A.M. = Rash Rules Everything Around Me . I mean, I get the...

I've gotta admit, over the past 10-15 years, I've heard about a lot of new, emerging genres that quickly come and go: Acid Jazz , Dark R&B, Skate Punk , Nu-Metal, Dubstep , Instrumental Hip-Hop, Grunge , New-Wop , House , etc... But I'd never heard of "Jersey Club," until late last night. My first real exposure to Jersey Club music was presented by the good people over @ Ad Hoc (formerly Altered Zones), DJ Sliink/DJ Tray - "The Cypher." The brief Soundcloud description section details that "The Cypher" showcases the vocal talents of 4 largely unknown rappers... Tah Breeziiy, Stacks Cartel, Sean Sheesh , and Ant_Jacoby . I have NO IDEA how the fuck they manage to stay on beat so well, over-laid against that fiercely 2-3x BPM "mess" of a well-constructed Hip-Hop beat! ha Unable to find a whole lot of background info on the mysterious, fast-paced Jersey Club genre, I sent a simple, hope-filled email over to the man himself. D...