Shin Jung Hyun – The Godfather Of South Korean Psych

Listen: “Funky Broadway (Live).”

Check: Egon’s piece on Shin Jung Hyun on NPR here.

Shin Jung Hyun, commonly referred to as the Godfather of Korean rock n’ roll, is often compared to Elvis. But that really doesn’t do him justice. Sure, he might have been as popular as Elvis in South Korea. But he’s more like the David Axelrod/Brian Wilson/Jimi Hendrix of South Korea. During Seoul’s tumultuous late 60s and early 70s, he had found the time to write, arrange and produce dozens of protégés who would follow him down whatever crazy path he chose to take them

Posted in Picks

Indonesian Psych, Prog and Funk Comp

Now-Again, in conjunction with Canadian producer Jason “Moss” Connoy and Indonesian rock legend Benny Soebarjda, will release an anthology that represents an extensive survey into the Indonesian psychedelic and progressive rock scene that flowered in Jakarta in the early 1970s. The release is planned for early 2010 and will include masterpieces by bands such as Golden Wing, pictured above.

Posted in News

Forge Your Own Chains

Now-Again’s Foray Into Funky Psychedelia: American gospel, paranoiac soul, loner folk, East-Nigerian fuzz, Thai rock, Iranian ballads and more….

This compilation introduces a new direction for Now-Again Records and its owner, Stones Throw Records GM, A&R and producer Egon. With the same detailed, no-stone-unturned approach he used for Deep Funk (The Funky 16 Corners, Cold Heat ), he tackles beat-heavy global psychedelia with Forge Your Own Chains.

Forge Your Own Chains showcases music from all corners of the world: Colombia, Nigeria, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand and Iran. The focus – in keeping with Now-Again’s tradition – is on melody, driving rhythms and accessibility. Not one song is included on this compilation because it is from a “rare” album. Certainly, many of these songs do spring from albums that exchange hands for many thousands of dollars. Certainly, many of these songs have never seen reissue. But these songs are all beautiful in their own right and work to form a coherent album.

Psychedelic records, long the mainstay of older, grizzled collectors and seemingly quaint, are, in the hands of Egon and those of his generation, giving up new ghosts. And, with comps like Forge Your Own Chains, inspiring new investigations into our not so distant (and still very much alive) musical past.

Posted in News

Kourosh

By the early 1970s, Iranian artists such as diva Googoosh, her r&b influenced saxophonist and musical director Erik, sitar-funker Abbas Mehrpouya and the angelic tenor Pourain took the stage. Using indigenous instruments and forms and adding electric guitar as well as other Western influences, these artists set a new standard for Middle Eastern pop music. And so did Kourosh Yaghmaei. But Kourosh was of a different sort.

While the aforementioned artists are giants in their own right, Kourosh stands as the godfather of Persian Rock and Psychedelia. Alongside his brothers, the guitarist Kamran and the keyboardist Kambiz, the trio created vocal and musical stylings that bear a striking resemblance to Turkish fuzz-guitar god Erkin Koray. But their tales – such as “Hajme Kahali,” a meditation on loneliness, are uniquely Iranian.

Kourosh’s 7” singles are exceedingly rare. They are all masterful in their cross-cultural melding but they – alongside music Kourosh recorded in the mid-to-late 70s but never officially released – have languished since the Revolution, and are unheard of by those outside of the immediate Iranian diaspora. We at Now-Again Records, alongside Kourosh and his son Kaveh, have corrected this glaring inaccuracy in the world of Psychedelic Funk and Rock music with the Back From The Brink anthology, which we released in August 2011.

Posted in News

Natural Yogurt Band

The Natural Yogurt Band first signed with Gerald “Jazzman” Short in late 2007. It didn’t take much – a mysterious UK-based duo that record brooding, beat-heavy, difficult-to-categorize demo, love Galt MacDermot, David Axelrod and Ennio Morricone’s 60s and 70s masterpieces and care most about releasing their music in the vinyl format? It was only natural, then, that Short and Now-Again’s Egon would hatch a plan for an expanded North American issue of the band’s debut – an album that had already been hailed as a fine release in keeping with the best “library music” issues of the same era.

Now, the Natural Yogurt Band are signed to Jazzman and Now-Again and plan release their sophomore album as a joint-venture between the two companies in 2010.