The Reason(s) We Can’t Stop Listening: While we’ve always relished the carefully-curated reissues of labels like B-Music and Soul Jazz, our recent talk with the folks at Mexican Summer and Sacred Bones left us craving deep cuts; deep cuts like the international private pressings strewn across Forge Your Own Chains. A self-proclaimed sign of a “new direction” at the Now-Again division of Stones Throw, it’s a rare grooves record that somehow finds a sweet spot between Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. In other words, Chains‘ ‘heavy psychedelic ballads and dirges’ are infused with funk and soul, producing melancholic cuts that are just dripping with pitch-dark melodies and heavyweight drum breaks.
We’d pick out some favorites, but the entire goddamn thing is as essential as Egon‘s exhaustive liner notes. Easily a zero hour entry for reissue of the year.
RIYL: Looking for deeper meaning in dusty lava lamps; hash cakes; crate-digging on a (nearly nonexistent) budget
See Also:Something Old: Various Artists, Chocolate Soup For Diabetics (Relics, 1980; out of print, download here)
See Also:Something New: D.R. Hooker, The Truth (On Records, 1972; reissued in 2008 by Subliminal Sounds)
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