Various Artists – Forge Your Own Chains – Heavy Psychedelic Ballads And Dirges 1968 – 1974 (2009)

Various Artists – Forge Your Own Chains – Heavy Psychedelic Ballads And Dirges 1968 – 1974 (2009)

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.

Listen to D.R. Hooker “Forge Your Own Chains”

Tracklist:

1. Top Drawer – Song of a Sinner
2. Sensational Saints – How Great Thou Art
3. East of Underground – Smiling Faces Sometimes
4. D.R. Hooker – Forge Your Own Chains
5. Shin Jung Hyun and the Men feat. Jang Hyun – Twilight
6. T. Zchiew and The Johnny – Let Yourself Be Free
7. The Strangers – Two To Make A Pair
8. Damon – Don’t You Feel Me
9. Ellison – Strawberry Rain
10. Morly Grey – Who Can I Say You Are
11. Shadrack Chameleon – Don’t Let It Get You Down
12. Ofege – It’s Not Easy
13. Ana Y Jaime – Nina Nana
14. Kourosh Yaghmaei – Hajm-e Khaali
15. Baby Grandmothers – Somebody’s Calling My Name

Forge Your Own Chains, Vol. 1: Psychedelic Ballads And Dirges 1968-1974