Meme Magazine

Gil Scott-Heron – I’m New Here (XL)

This is dark, very dark. But, as you would have hoped from the first LP from the ‘godfather of hip hop‘ in 16 years, it’s brilliant. If you know Gil’s voice, age it about 100 years, put it on a backing track of Burial and Fourtet static, then you have an idea of where this record is going. The LP is book-ended by a haunting homage to the role certain women have played in his upbringing, with the tracks inbetween covering subjects such as loneliness, insomnia and alienation. You get the picture. But, and I’ll say this again, the whole album is utterly captivating, as it draws you track by track into Gil’s disturbing world. But then it ends, far too quickly. At half an hour long, it leaves you masochistically wanting more. Hopefully there will be. The album is out now on XL Recordings but if you go to the microsite you can download a free track.

Listen  / buy here:
> Microsite
> iTunes
> Amazon

Listen to ‘Running’

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 12:10 pm. It is filed under Reviews and tagged with Burial, FourTet, Gil Scott Heron, XL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.