Above, stream Egon’s set from the Boiler Room party in San Francisco last October. Selections include sneak-peaks into what is to come on a few of our forthcoming anthologies and songs from Kaleidoscope, JA Ceasar, GAA, The Zipps, SRC, Paternoster and other obscure names. Like Donovan. Kidding. No, actually we’re not. Listen and learn.
The legendary Zambian band’s disco/boogie years, contains the entirety of their two rare albums: 1980-1984. Out now on Now-Again Deluxe, 2CD on 01.21.14.
Regular visitors to this site are no strangers to the Zamrock movement from Zambia’s early to mid ’70s, from issues of the likes of WITCH, Rikki Ililonga and Musi-O-Tunya to our association with the Shadoks, Strawberry Rain and Mississipi Records reissues of Paul Ngozi and the Ngozi Family, Amanaz and Salty Dog.
Left out of our Zamrock investigation, for stylistic reasons as well as logistical concerns, were albums released after Zamrock’s heyday, when the music of ‘80s Zambia came to be influenced by disco and rhumba from neighboring Congo. Bands that didn’t adapt sounded outdated. 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.
The band privately issued two albums – Movin’ On in 1980, Kuomboka in 1984 – in small quantities before a dearth of gigs and the large ensemble’s overhead caused them to disband, sometime in 1985. Though but a decade separated the first and last WITCH albums, the recording capabilities of most nations in sub-Saharan Africa by 1984 had caught up with the rest of the world. Finally, fans of the WITCH’s arch can listen to, and acknowledge, the breadth of this great band and assess for themselves the recordings of both of WITCH’s incarnations.
We’re currently offering “Movin’ On” via Now-Again Deluxe at Drip.fm – “Kuomboka” will follow shortly. A 2CD set will see release on 01.21.14. Limited vinyl editions of both albums will soon be available through Invisible City Editions. Free download below!
Download: WITCH “Movin’ On”
Subscribe Now: https://drip.fm/nowagain
If you missed it: WITCH We Intend To Cause Havoc!.
Heliocentrics Quatermass Sessions 1 EP available NOW via Now-Again Deluxe and on vinyl. Stream the EP at Soundcloud and download a free MP3 here!
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. This is the kind of EP that you would happily welcome as an album – and, you know what, in the future you might: as the title hints, this is probably only the beginning of The Heliocentrics’ excavations into the sonic experiments they entered into for years at their recently vacated Quatermass Studios.
We’re currently streaming the entire EP on our Soundcloud and, if that’s not enough, you can grab an MP3 download below – the Jeremy Steig inspired “The Five Thing.”
Download: “The Five Thing”
Subscribe Now: https://drip.fm/nowagain
If you missed it: Heliocentrics 13 Degrees of Reality on Rappcats.
Earlier this year, we announced the sale of Enjoy The Experience, on our sister company Sinecure Books. We also helped compile and produce a companion CD and LP anthology with the same name that we distributed alongside the book. It contains masterpieces by the likes of Stephen David Heitkotter (who will see a full-on Now-Again issued retrospective in 2014) and satellite Now-Again artists Dennis The Fox and Gary Wilson. Well, we’re happy to announce – and, ahem, remind you, if you’ve not taken the plunge – that the New York Times has included our Enjoy The Experience compendium in it’s annual holiday gift guide of notable box sets. Jon Caramanica writes:
“Nowadays, it’s easy to make a record at home and invite the world to listen. Five decades ago, the recording and the distribution were tougher, but people still felt the urge to be heard. The songs on “Enjoy the Experience,” an anthology of whimsical and sometimes entertaining selections from private-press releases, are all over the place in genre and quality, but the real gems come in the heavily annotated booklet, with its stories of sister keyboard-competition winners, gospel trumpeters and records made solely to sit in a warehouse as part of a tax scam. This album serves as a companion piece to the book of the same title, which is full of even taller tales.”
Buy the LP: Enjoy The Experience via Sinecurebooks.com
Buy the CD: Enjoy The Experience via Sinecurebooks.com
Damon’s Song Of A Gypsy is generally regarded as one of the finest privately-pressed psychedelic rock records and has, for over twenty years, been one of the most sought after late 60s American rock artifacts.Under the supervision of Now-Again’s Egon and Damon himself, and over a five year period, Song Of A Gypsy has been researched and documented, and has now been pitch-corrected and remastered. It now sees what we’d like to call its definitive issue. Song of a Gypsy is a special sound, one that captures the last bloom of the flower power movement before it decayed into the haze of the 70s underground, one that traces a pop hopeful descending into chaos, and becoming the tortured soul who would create an LP to file alongside works by other lost greats of the late ‘60s, from Shuggie Otis to Rodriguez.
Download: Damon – Song of a Gypsy