various / now again

Those Shocking, Shaking Days

Lavish, heavyweight triple gatefold compilation spelling the untold story of late '60s/early '70s Indonesian psyche-funk. It follows Sublime Frequencies' recent exposes of the same period of Indonesian musical history on their revelatory reissues of albums by Dara Puspita and Koes Plus, who coincidentally appear on this album, too. 'Those Shocking, Shaking Days' is a labour of love compiled, researched and assembled by Stones Throw/Now-Again's Egon, together with notorious crate digger, Jason "Moss" Connoy, and a young Indonesian ex-pat, Chadra Drews, whose sleevenotes lend some historical and political context to these great examples of the global Psyche-Funk boom. Much of the music here was created during the early years of "New Order" after President Suharto's military coup, at a time when the floodgates were opened to musical influence from American and Europe following a period of imposed abstinence from "Western cultural imperialism", meaning records by Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and even poor old Tom Jones were banned in an attempt to correct the balance towards traditional Indonesian values after three centuries of Dutch colonial rule. Of course, their influence couldn't be erased completely and after the regime change myriad hard and psychedelic Rock records from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath were assimilated and imitated in the music of groups such as Koes Plus, AKA, and Shark Move, who all appear amongst the twenty tracks on offer. Highly Recommended.