We had the great pleasure of being let into the Now-Again Records office this month. Long before Collections was a concept, but very shortly after Egon impromptu opened for Madlib at our San Francisco show with heavy psych gems, we had the irrepressible urge to trawl through his records. Timing saw us pushing this one back quite a bit, so when the cohesive idea of Collections was introduced we eagerly re-approached the idea. We’ve of course picked up snippets here and there through the label itself as well as via his Funk Archaeology series, but nothing beat us seeing – strike that, hearing – for ourselves.

left: photographs of the late Southern soul/funk legend Richard Marks,
dug out of his Atlanta home for an upcoming anthology

He took us on a wondrous musical journey spanning psych, funk, prog and more; interspersed with useful information about each release such as which presses to look for if keen, and what’s going to be reissued for our ears to delight in.

We traveled through Spain with Madlib favorite Pan y Regaliz, Eastern Europe with our old loves Indexi and Drago Mlinarec plus a newfound one, Drugi Nacin; Iran with Kouroush Yaghmaei, over to the African continent with Zambian legends Ngozi Family (keep your eyes peeled for a respective anthology on the label in 2015), Ethiopia with Mahmoud Ahmed, Nigerian band The Hikers, and an unmissable slew of Angolan 45’s – this just to name a few.

Below find some impressions from our afternoon at the Highland Park headquarters, and make sure to mark this one for your calendars – Friday, June 27th, midday BST.