Forge Your Own Chains with Damon and The Strangers

By Derek Evers » Considering they're situated in California, it would've been easy for Now & Again to create a psychedelic comp from the 60s and 70s. A quick jaunt to San Fran and back would've given them enough material to draw from, but that's not Egon's style.

Built upon the reputation the Stones Throw subsidiary has created--impeccable production, liner notes and, of course, music--the Forge Your Own Chains comp of heavy psychedelic ballads and dirges may be a new direction in sound, but it is rooted in philosophy. Drawing from the records they use to sample as a starting point, it features psychedelia from all over the world: Columbia, Nigeria, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand and Iran.

As Egon explains:

While both funk and psychedelic music began as uniquely American phenomena, [they] appealed to progressive musicians across the world who were interested in rebelling--either politically, musically or both.

The Strangers ballad “Two to Make a Pair” is an example of the sound that leapt out of East Nigeria after the January 1970 armistice in the Nigerian Civil War. While Damon’s “Don’t You Feel Me” is the original track from which the Guilty Simpson and Oh No version was interpreted. But the entire comp is more than worth the green, so we suggest dropping it.

The Strangers, "Two To Make a Pair"

Damon, "Don't You Feel Me"

Posted on November 06, 2009

More on: now & again, the strangers, damon, forge your own chains, egon, stones throw

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