gil scott-heron making music again, new record to be released on xl
Sifting through promo mail today, one name stuck out at me in particular: Gil Scott-Heron. The celebrated poet and musician is scheduled to release his first record in sixteen years in February 2010 on XL Recordings, making him label-mates with MIA, Radiohead, and Devendra Banhart. This is good for several reasons, not the least of which is that the last time Scott-Heron was in the news, unfortunately it was for legal trouble.
The track here, entitled, "Where Did The Night Go," features the spoken-word that made him famous over a dirty, minimal backing track. As for Scott-Heron's past work, I recommend his 1980 record, actually titled "1980," that features prominent keyboard-work and brilliant arrangements by composer and collaborator, Brian Jackson. It's an album that often gets overlooked by critics that focus mainly on Gil Scott-Heron's earlier and jazzier work as well as his explosive lyricism; often cited as a major step in popular music's evolution towards hip-hop. Anyways, it's a great though more subtle record and can usually be found for pretty cheap on vinyl. Just to give you some perspective, I've included a track from that album here as well.
Highly regarded recording engineer and Shellac guitarist, Steve Albini, will be the keynote speaker of next year's NX35 Music Conferette in Denton, which is pretty impressive considering that Albini has turned down being the keynote speaker for the South By Southwest Festival in the past. He had originally planned to send Saturday Night Live performer, Fred Armisen down to Austin in his stead, to do his dead-on impersonation of Albini, but he backed out of the idea due to liability concerns. Considering that the festival had Harvey Pekar give an incredible talk last year, I would almost suggest that this be turned into a festival of notable speakers above all else.
Moving sale tomorrow at And/Or Gallery. Come hang out and look through all my stuff! Furniture, Art books and magazines, vintage phones, video game systems, some electronic music gear, TVs, monitors, lots of DVD players with remotes, CDs, computers, lighting tracks, cans, and bulbs, lots more...." - paul slocum
