Gil Scott-Heron/Makaya McCraven - We're New Again
We’re New Again is a unique reimagining of Gil Scott-Heron’s final album I’m New Here by the acclaimed Chicago-based jazz musician and producer Makaya McCraven. The release marks the tenth anniversary of Scott-Heron’s original and is the second full-length interpretation of I’m New Here, following Jamie xx’s 2011 We’re New Here album.
First conceptualised in 2005, and ultimately produced, by Richard Russell during New York recording sessions commencing in January 2008, I’m New Here was Gil Scott-Heron’s first album in thirteen years and found him sounding as vital and insightful as ever before, as Russell wrapped a minimal and electronic sonic world around Scott-Heron’s raw vocals.
On We’re New Again, those original sessions now have a complete new context, using samples collected from McCraven’s improvised live sessions with new wave Chicago jazz musicians and vintage samples taken from his parents’ recordings. It’s a musical situation that reconnects Scott-Heron with his hometown of Chicago, and a lineage of jazz and the blues that perfectly complements his voice.
Makaya McCraven, whose work Richard Russell first discovered after hearing McCraven’s 2017 Highly Rare album, is widely regarded as one of the most exciting and original voices in modern jazz. Equally renowned and revered as a musician, drummer, beat-maker and producer, McCraven has released a run of records that are at once genre-defying and redefining such as Universal Beings, Highly Rare and Where We Come From (Chicago x London mixtape) for the highly influential Chicago label International Anthem. As the New York Times states: “Makaya McCraven has quietly become one of the best arguments for jazz’s vitality."
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TRACK'S WE'RE LOVING
Junior Fiction - 'Your Love'
Coda Chroma - 'Water'
Current Obsession - 'Drop Down'
Tornado Wallace - 'Midnight Mania'
Primo! - 'Best & Fairest'
Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes - 'What Kinda Music'
Resili - 'Gees Peace'
Jon Hopkins - 'Scene Suspended'
Joshua Harry Hall - 'Errant Spring'