WitnessThinks…It’s Time To Move.

I just dropped off the The Everafter LP at Magneto Mastering today in sunny Minneapolis.
I’ve been getting a lot of messages asking about it lately and I figured it would probably be best to just make a post that explains where everything is at.

The Everafter LP is not the same album as the full length record I’ve talked about from time to time.

It’s a collection of some new, some unreleased and some rerecorded material to mark the end of the “Ever” series of mixtapes I’ve been putting out since 2005. It was originally intended to be an EP of the new stuff going on my Japanese release, but I decided to flesh it out a bit more and eventually it became a bit too lengthy to call an EP.

The rerecordings of older material are not my attempt at becoming George Lucas. Japan wanted some stuff from the The Ever Since EP, but the sound quality of the originals didn’t really mesh very well with my newer recordings. I decided to release a handful of those rerecordings stateside as well, since I still play them live and Ever Since has been out of print for a while. Ever been to a show, heard a song you liked, bought the CD and found it wasn’t on there? Yeah. I hate that too. That’s why I did it. It serves as a nice primer for people unfamiliar with my music.

The whole thing took way longer than expected to finish. Mostly because I wanted to gain experience making a professional studio album before I began work on the full length. Unfortunately, making a record in a studio is not as easy as doing it in your bedroom. There was a learning curve.

As for a release date? The record will be back in my hands from mastering next week. I’ll be able to make an announcement then.

The album has been mixed down by Joe Mabbott, a very talented sound engineer responsible for pretty much all the Rhymesayers stuff you’ve heard since Atmosphere’s God Loves Ugly. Since the source material varies from year to year, the quality isn’t going to be as flawless as it will for the full length, but this is by far the best sounding record I’ve released thus far.

So what’s next?

I’ll be shifting all of my focus towards my first official full length effort. You can expect that sometime next year. I won’t be wasting time. I’ve also recently finished up an instrumental mixtape that will be available for free download this fall. More on that very, very soon.

There’s a brand new Witness site ready to launch. New merch. New everything. Stay tuned.

-w

I’ll keep running where the angels fear to tread
When the blood red children of the maple pirouette.

Minneapolis is beautiful in autumn.
The park looks like a kaleidoscope.

Misunderstood
Lost the footing and we fell hard
That’s when the fireflies died in the bell jar
I used to pray that they would be awake in June
When that origami sunset folds to a paper moon
The skyline blushes when it breaks dawn
The highway stretches and the interstate yawns
But, I never sleep when the give and take’s gone
When it’s freezing in the place that we used to wake on
I was too ambitious and too damn timid
Too thrilled that the glass was half-filled
To wonder what was in it
But you’re a cynic when the magic still exists
Till you stifle all the wind that sends the daffodils adrift
That’s the reason that the kite fell flat, love
But if we wanted, it could sail right back up
Just hold that tether tight when the black winds blow
And promise me that you’ll chase it
If you let the string go

Been working on beats from about 9am to 11pm for the last three days in attempts to wrap up the final mixes of some instrumentals which will be going on my Japanese release before I start recording the final vocal takes.

I’m calling it “The Everafter LP”, which will be the final installment of the “Ever” series of EPs I’ve been doing for the last 4 years. It will consist of material from Eversince, Evermore, .45 Sweetheart and a few new and unreleased tracks. A healthy dose of instrumentals, a few remixes and a few songs completely reimagined. The record has a far jazzier feel than my last two releases, but I think it’ll be a fine ending to the last five years of music before I begin work on my first full length record.

It’ll see release stateside soon as well and I’ll be making an announcement about that as soon as the record is finished and shipped to Japan. And keeping with tradition, here’s a bunch of fliers that have my name on them.

Well, I did it.

I picked up and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
And to be honest, I couldn’t be happier.

To recap the story, I fell in love with a wonderful, inspiring girl who lives here. She’s the Lisa to my David. After making the decision that I needed some change of scenery, needed to scare the hell out of myself and needed to explore as many zoos, fields, parks, lakes, forests and city streets as possible with the aforementioned lady, I picked up and moved one thousand miles from home. Music took a temporary backseat, but I don’t think one could ask for a better distraction than happiness. Though, I’ll be damned if I become another statistical musician who loses steam when he stumbles over a little sunshine.

So what’s new?
I got one of these.

The lady and I captured this young mammoth when he was but a few weeks old. We call him Shark. Or Sharkey. Or Lemon Tiger Sand Shark. Or Zharque. Or pop.

Getting a dog when drunk may be worse than getting a tattoo after a few drinks–namely because tattoos aren’t alive–but I’m very happy with this decision. Even when that decision wakes me up at 4 AM because he wants to find and devour small pieces of corn on the cob hidden under miscellaneous shrubbery in the park.

Skyline.

I have a hard time imagining this place becoming Antarctica.

Weeping Willow Islands. You heard right, son.

I live in the south side of Minneapolis. Directly on Powderhorn Park, to be specific. The picture at the top of this post, in additions to the ones above are one of the many points visible from what is essentially my front yard. If Powderhorn Lake weren’t covered in pond scum and dead fish penises, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be swimming in it all week.

Minneapolis–Southside in particular–has a ton of epic restaurants, groceries and peculiar shops, often consolidated into the same building. For example, a bar that girl and I go to on occasion is a bowling alley, restaurant,  bar, cabaret theater and spoken word poetry joint. There’s also a laundromat/arcade/ice cream parlor not too far from me. A true artifact of 90’s excess.

Summer is serious business in Minnesota. Which I guess makes sense, considering how abysmally cold the winters are. The park in front of my house is a daily circus, home to people juggling axes, riding unicycles, practicing tumbling and tai chi and one woman who seems to think side stepping across the park is an acceptable form of public exercise. There seem to be festivals, outdoor concerts, outdoor movies and some kind of insane bar special going on everyday. There’s so much going on in fact, that there are about 3 weekly papers, 4 websites dedicated to daily activities in the city and a bulletin board dressed in a thousand flyers in almost every local business. And there are a ton of local businesses. Quirkiness is everywhere.

Vans are made of grass here. What else do you want?

Cars are sold with dinosaur hood ornaments. What of it?

As far as Hip Hop goes, it’s pretty much everything you’d expect. There are some very dope local radio stations which play a ton of local artists, the scene is ripe and growing and knowledge of the indie scene seems to be far more widespread than back home. I was even at a local show about a month ago only to see Ant of Atmosphere smoking cigarettes on the outdoor patio. Shit is tight knit and beautiful here. I’m looking forward to getting involved.

I’ve got many more stories to share, so I’ll be blogging about my experiences in Minnesota from here on out, in addition to the usual nonsense. I just needed to find a way to break the news and explain the story up until this point. Musically, I’m back on the ball and have some interesting things underway. I’m going to avoid making announcements because, well, if you’re reading this you know how my announcements normally turn out. Let’s just say it involves a full length record for next year, a new mixtape for this year and a ton of shows in places I haven’t played in over 5 years. I hope to see you there.

Below are a few other photos that I couldn’t cleverly weave into my post.

From inside the skyline.

Fish have auras here.

Butterfly exhibit at Como Zoo. Thousands of these things.

Once upon a time, there was an myriad of internets that focused on a rapidly growing independent hip hop scene. Message boards rife with “backpacker” and “herb” accusations, video documentation of that year’s Scribble Jam (back when your only other option was buying the VHS tape) and mp3 selections from small print 12″s were now available to otherwise clueless corners of the globe. While there had been pages with similar content in the past, these focused exclusively on obscure, awkward alternative hip hop artists and made heroes out of broke emcees who would later become as popular as the opinion based sites preemptively made them out to be.

Some of these websites were actually responsible for launching careers and while the late Hiphophunks.com was not one of them; it crossed my mind recently. It was designed to read like young girl’s idol magazine (ie: Tigerbeat) and featured hilariously shallow interviews with a mob of serious minded emcees. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet Archive, you can check out this interview with Sage Francis as it originally appeared and if you toy around with some of the links, you might find your way to other points of interest.

I remember a friend sent in some of my music for consideration and I received an email regarding an interview but the site went down shortly after. Another dream shattered.

(Edit: You can access the entire interview selection here. It serves not only as a source of entertainment, but as a perfect list of “What the fuck ever happened to that guy” rappers.)

Alright, so it’s not dead.

I’m not arrogant or ignorant enough to make a claim as broad as that. But the word “remix”, like “freestyle”, has long since lost the definition it carried in the golden days. Not to turn this into a backpacker rant, but I think it’s worth mentioning when the indie pop scene is putting together far more memorable remixes than the Hip Hop scene. Too many emcees not enough DJs syndrome, perhaps?

I’m not saying that good remixes don’t exist anymore; I just find myself hearing more and more “remixes” which consist of little more than an acapella haphazardly strewn across a lazily looped sample. They don’t add anything to the original song, nor do they provide a different interpretation of it. It’s just simply the same shit over a different beat. Maybe I’m bitter because I grew up on a bunch of remixes that were either new songs onto themselves or versions that were vastly superior to the originals. Or maybe it’s because I’m lucky to know a few producers who consistently pour their hearts into their remixes.

While it’s by no means a comprehensive list, here’s a list of some notable remixes:

Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full (Coldcut Remix)

Coldcut took an already classic track, flipped it up, laced it with a dope vocal sample from Israeli singer Ofra Haza and made lightning strike twice. I was exposed to this one through a local skate video which I would love to dig up, if only because it features someone riding a washing machine attached to a skateboard down a staircase.

The Pharcyde - She Said (Amsterdam Remix)

The original track was way too clean and never really sat well with me. Enter Dilla. He gives the Pharcyde the gritty jazz backdrop that they work best over and suddenly the chorus is enjoyable and one of Fatlip’s smoothest verses gets the proper shine. You know a remix is dope when it warrants another music video for a song that already has one.

(Notable Mention: “Soul Flower (Remix)” from Bizzare Ride II actually DOES have an original. Weird case where the remix is the most well known version because the original is on an obscure record. It was featured on British acid-jazz band the Brand New Heavies album and if you can find it, I highly suggest it.)

A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario (LONS remix)

Good luck going to a battle without hearing this beat come on once. This is a great example of a remix that has shares almost nothing in common with the original, aside from being another collaboration between Leaders of the New School and Tribe. Both tracks are classic, both are different. It’s tough to even call this one a remix, but I’ll be damned if it’s not making this short list.

Black Sheep - The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)

A week ago, I scored about twenty classic hip hop cassette tapes at the local thrift store. “A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing” was in that mother lode and while trying to teach myself how to fast forward and rewind through tapes with the same precision that I had in the 90s, I stumbled across the original version of this song. I forgot that it even existed. It’s a much clunkier version of the song above, and doesn’t include have the “Engine, Engine Number 9…” verse. So, this is a prime example of a remix that became the definitive version.

Public Enemy - Shut Em Down (Pete Rock Remix)

No clue why I can’t find anything other than the instrumental version on Youtube, but this is essential.

Not sure what to think about Universal Mind Control.
Lots of good ideas, lots of poor execution.
Lots of experiment and almost no polish.
Lots of keyboards. Lots of me not liking keyboard focused hip hop.

Common doesn’t seem to happy with it himself and seems to feel his upcoming follow up to Finding Forever will be the one to look forward to. Makes me feel much better. Hopefully, the follow up will have better artwork than it’s predecessor did.