Returning after their 13 Degrees of Reality album with a full on volley of psychedelic-funk songs first heard on Gaslamp Killer’s HELIO X GLK EP, the Heliocentrics offer nine tracks that Rolling Stone describe as “…sprawling, with percussive patterns that suddenly morph into extraterrestrial sound blasts and opaque, detouring patterns.” We couldn’t have said it better.
Download: Heliocentrics – Quatermass Sessions 1
Restored/remastered transfer and never-before-heard demos of this exceedingly rare Californian psych-rock album. We present the definitive look into a musical vision equal parts dangerous and peaceful, nihilistic and optimistic. It’s safe to say the world has never heard something like Heitkotter – it’s a rare and vital look at 60s and 70s American rock through the sad story – and incredible music – of an untethered soul. The Heitkotter tale is cautionary, but the music is as close to the sublime as American rock has ever ventured.
Download: Heitkotter – Black Orckid
The legendary Zambian band’s disco/boogie years, contains the entirety of their two rare albums: 1980-1984. In the 1980s, the Southern African nation of Zambia – whose Zamrock scene has been thoroughly investigated in prior Now-Again releases – came to be influenced by disco and rhumba from neighboring Congo. Thus even Zamrock’s greatest band, WITCH, splintered, with a skeleton crew of core members embracing younger musicians to record and release two albums that found the band replacing fuzz guitars with whirling synthesizers and trying their hand at soul, disco and boogie – all sung in English.
Download: WITCH – Movin’ On/Kuomboka
Above, stream Egon’s set from a recent stop at Gilles Peterson’s legendary Brownswood studios in London. Contains a series of previews of albums to come on Now-Again, from Karl Hector & The Malcoun’s Unstraight Ahead to the Ngozi Family Band’s Day of Judgement, forthcoming titles on Madlib and Dilla’s labels, never before heard Zimbabwean rock and funk tracks and a special, special treat: the lost JB’s recording of Bootsy Collins and the boys covering Jimi Hendrix. Fantastic!
Tracklist:
Neoton – Gyere Álom (Pepita)
Karl Hector & The Malcouns – Kaifa Part 1 (Now-Again)
The J.B.’s – The Power Of Soul (King Record test press)
Eye Q – I Am Selfish (Now-Again)
Ngozi Family Band – Sunka Mulamu (Now-Again)
Stars of Liberty – Power To The People (Afro Soul)
Madlib – Selections from Rock Konducta Vol. 2 (Madlib Invazion)
J Dilla – Give ‘Em What They Want (Pay Jay)
Stephen David Heitkotter — Untitled (Now Again)
Fabiano do Nascimento & Airto Moreira – Minha Cirandar (Now-Again)
Out today – restored/remastered transfer of this legendary Californian bedroom psychedelic album – with never-before-heard demos. Extensive booklet contains dozens of unpublished photos and images and a thorough investigation into this exceedingly rare artifact. Limited edition deluxe 2LP and hardbound casebook CD!
In a previous post, we told you about the bizarre LP known as Heitkotter – recorded in around 1971 and pressed in a run of less than twenty five copies. The culmination of Stephen David Heitkotter’s artistic career. Ross Dwelle, Stephen’s childhood friend and the drummer on the record, describes the bedroom sessions that lead to this album in a handsome Craftsman home in Old Fresno as a young rock trio “trying to play five songs written by a man losing his mind… probably stoned the whole time.”
Heitkotter, this time issued as Black Orckid, as we assume Stephen would have wanted it – is too complicated to be written off as a symptom of a greater ill, or lionized by a few (and dismissed by the majority) as “outsider” art. It’s a rare and vital look at 60s and 70s American rock through the sad story – and incredible music – of an untethered soul. And as we hope to show in enlightening more of Stephen’s backstory, it can also be considered sweet, kind and optimistic. The Heitkotter tale is cautionary, but Stephen’s music is as close to the sublime as American rock has ever ventured.
Heitkotter is now available via our webstore at rappcats.com, and digitally to our subscribers at Now-Again Deluxe and via iTunes. Download a free mp3 below.
Buy: Heitkotter at rappcats.com
Download: “Cadillac Woman”
