WITCH’s impossible-to-find 7″ singles, never on LP, and all recorded around their Lazy Bones!! album. The last of WITCH’s Zamrock to finally see wide commercial release. Pressed on Deep Purple colored vinyl: this was Now-Again’s officially sanctioned Black Friday Record Store Day 2025 Release and is now available everywhere.
EXPLORE THIS RELEASE AND WITCH’S ZAMROCK COLLECTION AT BANDCAMP» WE INTEND TO CAUSE HAVOC! – THE NOW-AGAIN BANDCAMP
With the release of this compendium, Now-Again completes the presentation of all-star Zamrock ensemble WITCH’s recorded output. The music on Fool’s Ride was previously available on vinyl only as part of the long out-of-print WITCH box set We Intend To Cause Havoc!. This presentation contains audio fixes and restoration beyond that first issue.
WITCH’s catalog shows the breadth and depth of the Zambian music 70s scene that birthed Zamrock. WITCH’s first two, self-produced albums – Introduction and In The Past, released in unison with the birth of the commercial Zambian recording industry – are exuberant experiments in garage rock, and are as influenced by the Rolling Stones as they are James Brown. Their third album, Lazy Bones!!, is the band’s masterpiece – a dark, brooding psychedelic opus that makes equal use of wah-wah and fuzz guitars, that relies as heavily on the stomping feel of hard rock as it does the syncopation of funk. The band’s last two albums – Lukombo Vibes and Including Janet, recorded after the band toured with Osibisa – make use of traditional Zambian rhythms and folk melodies. They are the most “Afro-Rock” of WITCH’s oeuvre.
WITCH issued a series of 7″ singles amidst their five albums as a rock ensemble (two, later disco and boogie albums were issued under the name WITCH, but those albums only featured the participation of two of the band’s original members). Around the transition between Lazy Bones!! and Lukombo Vibes, WITCH presented series of singles that contained songs not on those two albums. It is from these rare vinyl records and master-tape transfers that WITCH frontman Emmanuel “Jagari” Chanda preserved, that we collated the music presented – finally, and as WITCH’s final historical album – as Fool’s Ride.