Send "Witch " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 When I first saw that Witch had a new album out, I was pretty stoked. Witch is the stoner metal off-shoot of Dinosaur Jr., and I’m a sucker for both stoner metal and Dinosaur Jr. What I discovered is that Witch is ALSO a Zambian rock quintet from the ‘70s. So, instead of the outsized retro-riffing of J Mascis’s band, I got something that sounded truly retro: bare-bones psych-rock with a slight Afrikaans inflection, mastered so flatly that you’ll be fiddling with the volume seconds into the first track.It was a nice surprise, to say the least. Lazy Bones!! is the sound of five talented Africans playing their own Woodstock in someone’s cramped basement. Whereas Witch’s Western counterparts paid professional to smooth over their rough spots, though, it’s exactly these rough spots that make Witch special (their name is, according to the press notes, an acronym of “We Intend to Cause Havoc”). The mic often blows out, as if the limited recording equipment could barely contain the performance. It lends even funk cracklers like “Look Out” some proto-punk urgency while enhancing the making the melancholic “Black Tears” resonate like a warfront diary entry. This scruffiness notwithstanding, though, Lazy Bones!! is still perhaps too subdued and reverent to stand outside of time. But it’s hardly a mere curiosity either, and as a fun wah-wah-and-fuzz-guitar trip, it’s solid gold....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| Lazy Bones!! is the recently reissued third album by the Zambian psych-funk quintet WITCH (“We Intend To Cause Havoc”), and it may be best described as marginal, in dual senses of the word. At times, the record just passes the threshold of technical competence. But to call Lazy Bones!! marginal is not to denigrate it. It’s not lack of quality so much as the collection’s position on the periphery of several styles — and of a 70s “Zam-rock” scene that itself occupies a small corner of the niche African record collectors’ market — that ultimately makes “marginal” such a tidy, if reductionist, summation. WITCH’s sound bears strong influences of both funk and Anglophilic psychedelic rock, but it doesn’t sit comfortably in either style. Seldom do WITCH’s songs — often grooves, really — approximate the sunshine pop- or blues-appropriation of the Sonics or early Beefheart. Instead, they occupy some wah-wah nether-region between Jimi Hendrix’s rock stomps and the J.B.’s’ syncopated loops. Yet with a combination of fuzz guitar, Emmanuel Jagari Chanda’s often stilted, English-language vocals, and thin-sounding, lo-fi guitar and drums, WITCH often achieve an aural effect that does hearken to Nuggets-style psych-tinged garage rock. Somewhat ironically, given the likely source material for the reissue and technical constraints of recording in 1970s Zambia (where any such capacity was a luxury), much that’s appealing about WITCH is actually surface level — primarily, Chris Mbewe’s searing leads and the gritty marriage of fuzz with off-kilter bass and drums. WITCH are at their best on such tracks as “Strange Dream” — with its wah-wah backdrop and slinky, crisp acoustic guitar-driven groove — and the rhythmically agile “Black Tears,” which begins as eerie, plodding psych-folk but quickly kick-starts into a blistering assault of knees-on-stage guitar soloing. It’s when the group veers closer to pop and straight-ahead funk material — as on “Look Out,” “Off Ma Boots” and the title track — that deeper, nagging deficiencies emerge. The melodies are forgettable if not slightly grating, and they get little help from lead singer Chanda, whose nasal delivery doesn’t have enough gravel or swagger to match his band (when it isn’t overwhelming him) but does have occasional problems with pitch....full text |
| Bromusic |
| Completely unknown band from Zambia , privately pressed on a small local label in 1975, this 5 piece electric band plays a strong electric African underground style. Tons of wah wah-fuzz guitar in every track, African style beats and vocals and all original song. If bands from Nigeria such as Blo and Ofege and bands from Zambia such as Rikki Ililonga and Chrissy Zebby are all traveling on the psychedelic highway with 100 mph the Witch overtakes them with 120. On the cover we can read: If you're feeling depressed, low, disturbed, out-of-sorts, sad, frustrated or widely demented, then folks, we suggest you seek out a quiet place, indulge in some soothing meditation and cut away that headache by listening to this inspiration album.-------(review taken from earrational)--------...full text |
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