By now, regular visitors to this site know that it’s somewhat of a Christmas/New Year’s tradition: I try to dig out some interesting record from the collection to share, in the hopes that you can somehow find a way to slip, I don’t know, Paul Ngozi or Thomas East in between Bing Crosby and selections from John Denver and The Muppets’ A Christmas Together at your family’s get together. Well, it’s been four years since I first shared the amazing novelty of South Korean psych-rockers He 5’s Merry Christmas Psychedelic Sound. And, in that post, I mentioned their epic “Jingle Bells” cover – really, a chance for them to stretch out into a ten minute medley of “Inna Gadda Da Vida” and “Paint It Black.”
in 2012, when photographer Eilon Paz came around the house to photograph some of my records for his Dust & Grooves project, he asked about any oddballs that I could share. It doesn’t really get any weirder than this album, so I pulled it out – and managed to snag a photo of my oldest son, who seemed more interested in the pictures of the hepcat looking Hes pictured on the back than in destroying this rarity. Lucky for me!
So, this year, as we take a few days off to celebrate a year of good music, we’re sharing with you one of the top tracks to emanate from South Korea’s psychedelic scene. Merry Christmas – 2015 – Psychedelic Sound!
Following their deft handling of musics from Eastern and Northern Africa alongside Western psychedelia, jazz and funk on the Unstraight Ahead album, Karl Hector & The Malcouns combine the previously available only on vinyl tracks from four EP’s – Tamanrasset, Ngugna Yeti Fofa, Coomassi and their latest, Ka Rica Tar – into an album as Krautrock as Afro Beat, as Multi-Culti-Psychedelic as Deep Funk.
Can’t Stand The Pressure is available as a CD that contains the entirety of Ka Rica Tar, and all of the other EP tracks that haven’t come out on CD. And if you missed those limited edition EP’s, don’t trip: we’re issuing a made-to-order set that will contain all four EP’s in their entirety, packaged in a hand silk-screened, chipboard sleeve.
Ka Rica Tar and the Can’t Stand The Pressure CD ship immediately.
Can’t Stand The Pressure 4LP set will be tallied in a month and put into production. Expect your set to ship early March 2016. Anyone who orders the box set will receive a download link for all 4 EP’s shortly after placing their order. We know you don’t want to wait for your funk.
We’ve already told you about Egon’s pop up record shop at Rappcats – and the 25% discount on all orders from the Now-Again Webshop there on December 12th. Now you can hear some tunes he grabbed from the hundreds of records on sale, from USC folkies channeling Vashti Bunyan while covering Joan Baez to Zambian proto-punk to Italian library weird jazz to Northern Soul to Carribean disco. 40 minutes of fun!
