Here And Now Recordings was started by London-based dj, producer, music journalist and record collector JC.
Moving to London in 1994 to attend University JC started avidly collecting funk, hip hop and house then eventually soul, disco and jazz too. He had been brought up on a diet of soul and jazz: these are his parents preferred genres. In 1997 he was offered a part-time job in Soho’s vinyl haven Reckless Records. He would work there until its sad demise in January 2007 having only a few years off as the Jazz Buyer at HMV Oxford Circus. In these 10 years he was lucky enough to acquire a serious musical knowledge from fellow staff, customers and his own healthy appetite for all things funky, jazzy and soulful.
Whilst at college JC became involved with an quickly evolving fanzine by the name of Beware The Cat. He would go on to pen articles on Tony Allen and interview Faze Action, Yam Who, Quinton Scott from Strut Records and Sam Kelly, drummer of the greatest funk act to come out of the UK and one that would give the Americans a run for their money: Cymande. Beware The Cat grew from strength to strength, offering a free covermount cd, gaining a distribution deal with SRD and WHSmith and then just as success was being tasted in went under.
Through his Faze Action connection JC was introduced to record producer musician Jim Hawkins. He had previous run M Records who put out albums by the Great British jazz guitarist Jim Mullens and hammond maestro Ed Bentley. He also also wrote and recorded for US3 alongside Geoff Wilkinson. Together with Jim Hawkins JC came up with the Funkanala concept and recorded many session in numerous North London studios with Senegalese players including the multi instrumentalist Omar Diop and singers Lena Diop and Olli Sarr plus a whole host of fine British jazz session players such as Mornington Lockett, Andy Panayi, Dave Lewis, Robin Lee from Faze Action, Mark van de Gucht from Galliano, Rich Milner from Pleasure Beach and Paul Jayasinha.
JC approached a multitude of labels and although Exceptional, Blow It Hard and Mukatsuku were interested he decided, upon guidance from Gary Corben who set up and ran primarily Brazilian reissue label What Music to go it alone. And Here And Now Recordings was formed towards the end of 2005.
The first release a Funkanala white label. The A Side ‘Bamako’, a “mind bending epic” as Dom Servini from Straight No Chaser and fine soul and jazz label Wah Wah 45s put it and on the flip ‘Economy Class’ which would become in favour with the techno fraternity such as Carl Craig and Stacy Pullen aswell as getting picked up by Danny Krivit. Shuay Okin from Kyoto Jazz Massive “loves ‘Economy Class’ and played it in so many different countries!”. Reckless Records provided the ideal environment to promote it with so many djs coming in and Nick and Darren at Goya Music did a fine job selling the 12. But it wasn’t until, then at Black Market Records, Ben Chapman from BBE put a copy in the hand of Simon Dunmore form Defected Records that things really started moving. Defected licensed it to their Miami 06 3cd set and “Economy Class” went flying all over the internet.
Here And Now Recordings followed up with the afrobeat, afrofunk, afrojazz, call it what you want workout ‘Be There Tomorrow Parts One & Two’ with the cosmic afro boogie, Bugz In The Attic style Boston Rodriguez remix of ‘Babakar’. This further propelled the popularity of Funkanala and subsequently Here And Now Recordings. DJ support came far and wide from the likes of Spiritual South, Seiji, Tom Wieland from Les Gammas, Michael Ruetten from Soul Searching Radio, Ennio Styles and Flow Dynamics. Next up came the Funkanala long player ‘Be There Tomorrow’ on cd which was distributed by Honest Jons and Boombox. Nine glorious afrolatin funk, jazz and house cuts!
This was followed shortly by in-demand soul and house producers Yam Who. Yam Who alongside Blackbeard carved a name for themselves by putting fantastic new music over hip hop and rnb acapellas and creating a trend in the music industry leading to many not so great copycat attempts at doing the same thing. It also brought alot of well paid official remix work their way and Yam Who would remix John Legend, Joss Stone and Incognito and them sign to Here And Now Recordings. ‘You Don’t Care About Our Love’, Here And Now Recordings third 12 inch vinyl release is a fantastic soul boogie house effort from Yam Who and a cover version of a rare UK disco tune by China Burton. So rare that with a bit of hype from a certain record collector it started fetching silly money on Ebay. Infact as much as £300 which equated to about $600! For the B Side Yam Who wrote Flunky Gone Punky (We Are Ready), a dubby punky disco house stormer. This was big with Norweigan super disco dj-producers Prins Thomas, Todd Terje and Lindstrom.
Here And Now Recordings kicked off 2008 with a fantastically ambitious live project by Motivators. The backbone to this wonderful collective are the Manu Dibango rhythm section. Upfront on vocals is Hannah Kemoh from Papa Records’ Reel People and brass section courtesy of Max Grunhard and Scott Baylis from Impossible Ark Records. Dom Servini from Wah Wah 45s immediatley jumped at ‘Jobu’ hammering the record all over Europe. Kev Beadle from Solar Radio opted in favour of the Now Side ‘Le Groove de Prune’ a serious bit of contemporary afrojazz grooves. Adrian Leach from Happy Jazz leant towards the cosmic jazz funk of ‘Jobu’ on the Here Side. Craig Charles from Red Dwarf prefers ‘Le Groove de Prune’ and played it on his BBC 6 Music Soul and Funk Show. Which track do you prefer?
Here And Now Recordings have recently signed DJD, house producer extraordinaire, who as recorded for many great dance music imprints such as Defected Records, Strictly Rhythm and Guidance. In this instance DJD has written and recorded with Chaz Jankel. Chaz Jankel alongside Ian Dury co-wrote many of the Blockheads’ hits and would later write ‘Ai No Corrida’ which was famously rerecorded by Quincy Jones, jazz trumpeter turned producer and arranger with Michael Jackson’s ‘Off The Wall’ and Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’ to his credits. This rocketed Chaz Jankel to success. He now writes for Robbie Williams since the departure of Guy Chambers. Furthermore, UK soul singer Angie Brown completes this line-up providing the vocals ‘Into The Night’. Listen out for this in May 2008.
The Here And Now Recordings catalogue is available digitally from the Here And Now Recordings-I Think Music site and from Beatport and Juno Download.
