Every once in a while, we read a review that – well – makes us want to give ourselves a little pat on the back. We love The Wire – one of the last, great music mags left – and when we read this one we had to smile. In a psychedelic sort of way.
Read the review here.
Forge Your Own Chains is out now, as if you didn’t know that.
As if you needed someone in a position of authority to tell you so: Forge Your Own Chains is one mind-melter of a comp. Check a review in this week’s Rolling Stone.
“… haywire brains are what make this freak-rock compilation so awesome!” We agree.
Link: Rolling Stone.
Yes, it’s been up for a month at Stones Throw’s webstore, but there’s something about seeing a record in a store first-hand that makes a release date special. Forge Your Own Chains is out everywhere good music is sold today.
While we’re at it, you didn’t forget to grab The Strangers’ “Two To Make A Pair,” did you?
Promotional Only. Free with your purchace of the Forge Your Own Chains LP.
Side A:
1. Guilty Simpson: My Time To Shine
2. Oh No: Feel Me
Side B:
3. Oh No: Loneliness
4. Oh No: Sensational Smash
NA 7021 7″ 2009
Side A, Track 1 produced by Egon and J.Rocc. Side A, Track 2 and Side B, Tracks 3 and 4 produced by Oh No. Created with samples taken from the Forge Your Own Chains compilation.
If you’ve seen the tag line for our Forge Your Own Chains comp and wondered what East Nigerian Fuzz sounded like, you didn’t have to go further than our Records Pick section to check out a shining example of the sub-genre by Nigerian high school phenoms, Ofege.
The Strangers – an older, more experienced organization – offered a more world-weary, dark take on the psychedelic funk sound. Their ballad “Two To Make A Pair” – which you can listen to here – is a winning example of the sound that leapt out of East Nigeria after the January 1970 armistice in the Nigerian Civil War.
Now-Again affiliate Uchenna Ikonne recently completed the license for this track with The Strangers’ guitarist, Ani Hoffnar. In future posts, we’ll tell you about the Nigerian Psych Funk comp that we’re working on with Ikonne and New Zealand psych zealot Heavyfuzz.
Here’s an excerpt from Egon’s Forge Your Own Chains liner notes – The Strangers’ story.
The Strangers, founded and lead by organist Bob Miga, were one of the many funk-rock ensembles to spring out of the Biafran region of Nigeria the January 15, 1970 armistice in the Civil War between the Nigerian Army and Biafran secessionists. As Miles Cleret writes in his liner notes to the Nigeria Special compilations, “When the war had commenced in 1967, the world was witnessing a musical evolution… in January of 1970, with peace finally in the air, Nigeria had its chance to really capitalize on that revolution.”
A musicians living in post-war Biafra could make a decent living playing for the Nigerian Army soldiers who carried with them Nigerian Pounds, the currency that quickly eclipsed the short-lived Biafran Pounds. Bands such as The Funkees, The Apostles, BLO and Ofege were some of many influenced by British bands like The Beatles and Cream and by American acts on Motown and its subsidiary labels, such as the rock imprint named for its principal band, Rare Earth.
The Strangers released at least three singles on HMV. Most, like “Two To Make A Pair,” are sung in English, but some, including the superb “Onye Ije,” are sung in the band’s native Igbo language. All feature insistent, funky drums, fuzz guitar and Miga’s ever present organ. The band, like many of their Biafran compatriots, never released an album and disappeared from the scene in a short time. Guitarist Ani Hoffner hijacked band members to form the One World funk band and Bob Miga went on to lead the psychedelic ensemble The Hykkers.
