Album Review: Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – We’re New Here

After the xx’s sparse debut record was remixed by everyone from Mount Kimbie to Delorean to Matthew Dear – each taking advantage of all that basic space and those soulful vocals – it’s fitting that Jamie Smith, percussionist and producer for the trio, has pretty much done the same trick with Gil Scott-Heron’s similarly minimal comeback album I’m New Here. It only adds to the feeling of things coming full circle when you consider that the opening track of Heron’s album knowingly sampled Kanye West, who had in turn previously sampled Heron’s work: We’re New Here mightn’t be a collaboration in anything but the vaguest sense, but the influential poet/musician is all too aware of the potency of taking old forms in new directions.

So it is that Jamie xx has been given free rein to interpret Heron’s weather-beaten ruminations in his own inimitable style. Any question of him being overly reverent towards his source material was answered by the ‘NY Is Killing Me’ remix which surfaced a couple of months back: reducing Heron’s vocal to rhythmic device as opposed to narrative device, its pulsing bass and nocturnal synth stabs mark it out as one of his finest moments, up there with his exceptional ‘Rolling In The Deep’ remix.

The rest of We’re New Here is by no means predictable, some tracks emphasise the soulful expressiveness of Heron’s vocals while others treat it as an instrument to be manipulated and chopped. The spacious, echoing production, dubby rhythms and skittering percussion on tracks like ‘Running’ and ‘Home’ betray Smith’s bass music influences, providing a compelling framework for Gil’s quintessentially urban, imposing tenor. ‘My Cloud’, on the other hand, is a mellow and lilting take on a recording that didn’t make the final cut of the original album: it’s a nifty change of pace and shows that Smith is a producer of diverse talents. Elsewhere, ’Your Soul and Mine’ samples Rui Da Silva’s ‘Touch Me’, making the vocals sound more spectral and playing them off Heron’s weary croak.

Overall, We’re New Here is an eclectic, enjoyable record that further cements Jamie xx’s reputation as an exciting and inventive young producer. It’s not the most coherent record – not that coherence is a common characteristic of remix albums in general – and it sort of echoes the ‘unfinished sketch’ vibe of the source material. Despite those qualifications though, this is very solid stuff.