Now-Again

The great thing about Now-Again Records, the adventurous subsidiary of Peanut Butter Wolf’s Stones Throw curated by the venerated West Coast DJ’s label partner Egon, is that you never know what to expect from them. One month they can make available a compilation of private press funk from Florida or the Carolinas, and follow it up with an anthology of heavy psychedelic rock from Southeast Asia and a five-disc box set from lost 60s teenage jazz prodigy PE Hewitt.

However, alongside the sonic curios, Now-Again has also served as a fine showcase for forward-thinking artists whose ethos and depth of knowledge for groove-based music’s history and creation rival that of their record company bosses, including in-demand UK groove collective The Heliocentrics, next-level beatsmith Dimlite and Brazilian music icon Seu Jorge. But perhaps the most intriguing of all the talent that’s emerged from the Now-Again A&R department is the Natural Yogurt Band, an English instrumental unit comprised of former Little Barrie drummer Wayne Fullwood and engineer/producer Miles Newbold.

Following the 2009 reissue of their small-run debut on the Jazzman imprint Away With Melancholy comes Tuck In With…, an album that explores the pair’s obsession with rare, dusty source samples. Recorded at the Chicken Shack in Nottingham, the Band dives into the soulful sounds of the seemingly endless cache of film and television cue records produced in the UK, Italy, France, Poland and Germany during the 60s and 70s, which has proved to be a veritable cornucopia of quality beat material in the hip-hop world for years. With Tuck In…, Fullwood and Newbold do a brilliant job replicating the loose, vintage fusion of psyche, soul, funk, jazz and rock that couldn’t have come off better outside of Now-Again issuing a collection of sound library nuggets (gentlemen?) across 14 headphone masterpieces and 18 short bonus beats that range from seven seconds to over a minute.

Anyone into David Axelrod, Lalo Schifrin and Ennio Morricone at their funkiest ought to Tuck In With this bottomless pocket of heavy, heady vibes from a group whose music hits you the exact same way as the nasty dairy treat from which they get their name.