Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx: ‘We’re New Here’
Last February saw the release of Gil Scott-Heron’s first new studio album in nearly two decades, I’m New Here.
The acclaimed album, one of the year’s best, was released on the XL label and featured new Scott-Heron songs and poems, chilling beats and sounds, as well as some odd but extraordinary covers, including Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues” and indie-rock songwriter Bill Callahan’s emotive title track.
Despite the fact that he didn’t write the track “I’m New Here” — performed with just Scott-Heron’s aged, experienced and grizzled voice, along with an acoustic guitar — it’s not only a stand-out cut on the album, but one of Scott-Heron’s most personal and intimate recordings ever.
A year later, and XL is already set to release a follow-up album.
We’re New Here is set to be released Feb. 22. You can listen to and purchase downloads (in both MP3 and Flac formats) at the site werenewhere.com.
But don’t expect We’re New Here to be a collection of new Scott-Heron tunes or even more awesome covers. The album features Jamie xx of the band xx remixing a lucky 13 number of tracks from the I’m New Here sessions, which took place in 2009. Some of the songs, pieces of songs, and scraps of Scott-Heron speaking in the studio that don’t appear on the original album, now get a synthesized treatment as Jamie xx had access to the original recordings and selected bits and pieces to weave into an electronic frenzy that makes even the progenitor of hip-hip — Scott-Heron is often called the Godfather of Rap — seem like an acoustic folk act.
Scott-Heron once said “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” However, with the recent protests in Egypt being captured by TV nearly 24/7, he may need to update that song on his next record.
Which we hope won’t take another 20 years to make.
Visit here to purchase or download two songs from the Feb. 22 release, “I’ll Take Care of You” and “NY Is Killing Me.”
April 29th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Genticus…
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