We're New Again - A Reimagining By Makaya McCraven (CD)

To mark the tenth anniversary of I’m New Here’s release, XL Recordings present a unique reimagining of the album by the acclaimed Chicago-based musician Makaya McCraven, whose work Russell first discovered after hearing McCraven’s “Above & Beyond”, from 2017’s Highly Rare album.

Equally renowned and revered as a musician, drummer, sampler, beat-maker and producer, McCraven is widely regarded as one of the most exciting and original voices in modern jazz via a run of records that were at once genre-defying and redefining such as Universal Beings, Highly Rare and Where We Come From (CHICAGOxLONDON 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.”

On We’re New Again, recorded and produced in the main at his Chicago home studio with a host of close-knit musicians, McCraven fuses the kind of killer, improvised live musicianship and electronic, sample-based approach to recording he’s renowned for with that vocal - the deep, stop-you-in-your–tracks, worldly-wise voice of Gil Scott-Heron – to enormously powerful effect.

Tracklist

1. Special Tribute (Broken Home pt.1)
2. I’m New Here
3. Running
4. Blessed Parents
5. New York is Killing Me
6. The Patch (Broken Home pt.2)
7. People of The Light
8. Being Blessed
9. Where Did the Night Go
10. Lily Scott (Broken Home pt.3)
11. I’ll Take Care of You
12. I’ve Been Me
13. This Can’t Be Real.
14. Piano Player
15. The Crutch
16. Guided (Broken Home pt.4)
17. Certain Bad Things
18. Me and the Devil