Not entirely unlike Peanut Butter Wolf, Madlib, Egon & John Doe, dj BC, Jeremiah Jae, and TT5BR before him, Awkward has unleashed a 10-track collection of Beastie Boys remixes fittingly called POSSE IN EFFECT 1. Awkward is a UK-based producer/emcee/artist/DJ with affiliation to Los Angeles crew The Cloaks and Bristol's Ghost.Locust Music. He has previously worked with clipping. The Kleenrz, Nocando, Open Mike Eagle, Self Jupiter (Freestyle Fellowship,) Third Sight, Zackey Force Funk, and Malakai's Stepchild AKA Stepasaur. We, here at The Witzard, actually, first heard about Awkward after he mastered Roughneck Jihad's recent compilation album, The Red Herring Mixtape. In conjunction with Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz & Michael "Mike D" Diamond's newly-released memoir, BEASTIE BOYS BOOK, Awkward has collected 10 choice cuts from throughout The Beasties' storied three decades-long career. Said Beasties remixes were originally created between 2007-12 and were previously released in 2014 as Awkward vs. BeastieBoys.


Now, they've been properly re-packaged as POSSE IN EFFECT 1 and are available to download or purchase for THE! FIRST! TIME! EVER! It appears as though the song titles for most of Awkward's remixes have simply been re-arranged and Beastie Boys die-hards should quickly be able to figure it out. Awkward says he's currently working on a number of projects, including a follow-up to The Cloaks' 2014 self-titled debut. The Cloaks' LP2 will feature core crew members Awol One, Gel Roc, D-Styles, Sir Beans & Awkward, as well as special guests Shapeshifters & Sage Francis. Awkward's POSSE IN EFFECT 1 is currently available to stream or download from Ghost.Locust Music's Bandcamp page. Also, below, you'll see an excerpt from BEASTIE BOYS BOOK, as published by Vulture, about attending Black Flag's first-ever East Coast show at The Peppermint Lounge in Times Square in March of 1981. Ad-Rock & Mike D's BEASTIE BOYS BOOK is now available, as well, wherever fine paperbacks are sold through Spiegel & Grau.

"In retrospect, maybe the most impressive thing about the show is how many bands formed at that moment and in the aftermath. It inspired Yauch and John [Berry] and me to form Beastie Boys a few months later. It inspired Adam Horovitz to form The Young & The Useless. Thurston Moore was there. He was already playing around with Kim [Gordon], but they didn't debut as Sonic Youth until a few months later. And that summer, D.C. punk and mosher, Henry Garfield, who was seeing Black Flag for the first time that night, would join the group as its singer under the name "Henry Rollins." To him, and all of us in the audience, that night in March changed what we thought was possible."

- BEASTIE BOYS BOOK (Vulture Excerpt)