The Witzard

Pittsburgh-based Post-punk/New Wave band Chantillion aren't exactly a new/"rising" artist, as this column's title might suggest—they've been active since releasing 2017 single "Brassque"—but they are, in fact, new to these digital pages of The Witzard. Chantillion 's line-up consists of Amos Levy on "lead synthesizer," Jackson O'Connell-Barlow on synth/vocals, Justin Pelissero on bass guitar, and Gregg Weber on drums. O'Connell-Barlow is a frequent collaborator and affiliate of Shark Tank's Height Keech & Mickey "Free" Freeland. Jackson O'Connell-Barlow currently has an active solo project dubbed MRS.PAINTBRUSH and was once in a Hip-Hop group called Grand Buffet with Jarrod Weeks AKA Lord Grunge from Shark Tank, as well. During their Grand Buffet heyday, Jackson & Jarrod were commonly refereed to as Mr. Pennsylvania, Nate Kukla & Plaps and Fred Durts, Matt Kukla & Viceroy, respectively. We...

"'The Last Working Dinosaur" is the first single by Cody Jones (formerly Stillborn Identity ) from his upcoming project, Out with The Old, In With The New. Follow Your Heart & You’ll End Up Alone . Cody had been listening to a lot of Serengeti , at the time and was drawn to the idea of his writing not being confined by events and thoughts that were literally true. The theme of the track is inspired by his working relationship with his dad, who he saw doing everything a very "old school" way at Northgate Auto Body , the garage he [has] owned and worked in for the last 30 years," Cody Jones wrote within a recent press release. I first met Cody Jones (then still Stillborn Identity ) through beatsmith John "Jumbled" Bachman , like many Baltimore and Philly area rappers and producers I've worked with over the course of the last year or so; "should've stayed in school—maybe been a journalist or blogger, but now I'm runnin...

"Having a band website in 2015 is kind of pointless. If someone wants to know when we’re playing or what we're doing, they can get that information from social media or sites like Songkick , but you still have to have [an official website]," Tanlines percussionist Jesse Cohen recently told Billboard . "I was thinking about how we could make something relevant to how we actually use The Internet , and I was thinking about how much time we spend on the menu page for Netflix trying to figure out what movie to watch," he continued; Cohen is of course, referring to Tanlines' newly-revamped band website, which appears to be a thinly-veiled homage to Netflix 's almost instantly recognizable layout. Jesse Cohen and fellow bandmate Eric Emm seemed to be pretty nonchalant as to how Netflix might have reacted once their site went live, even considering the fact that "half the links point you to sign up for Netflix ;" although "finding out tha...

Not entirely unlike it's highly-revered Classic/Indie Rock predecessors Sgt. Pepper's and The Blue Album , sample grand-wizard Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk ultimately intended for his latest body of work, Broken Ankles EP to function as "a continuous mix and it intended to be listened to as a while with gap-less playback." The Pittsburgh native then recruited veteran emcee Freeway from the neighboring suburb of Philadelphia to overlay gritty complex rhyme schemes atop his multi-layered 6-track mini-album, which somehow still manages to sample everyone from Aretha Franklin to Nine Inch Nails . For the purposes of this very EP, Girl Talk & Freeway have both slightly modified their respective styles, but not to the point that it's beyond recognizable or would endanger alienating long-time fans. I'm actually a little surprised at how good most of Girl Talk 's beats sound; they're 100% full-fledged Hip-Hop beats with sufficient room for additi...