<strong>XL Recordings</strong> <strong>****<br/></strong> Combining the militant soul of Marvin Gaye and the rebellious poetics of Allan Ginsberg or Bob Dylan, the searing indictments of consumer culture in Gil Scott-Heron's soul poems, such as 1970's seminal <em>The Revolution Will Not Be Televised</em>, announced his arrival as a unique voice. Scott-Heron's music releases in the 1970s and 1980s subsequently earned him the sobriquet "the godfather of rap". After spending several years in and out of court (and jail) on drugs-related charges, he returned to the public eye last year aged 61, releasing <em>I'm New Here</em>, his first record since 1994. It was greeted with widespread critical acclaim, and in the light of its status as a redemptive return by an ageing legend, the announcement that it was to be remixed in its entirety was greeted with some scepticism: why dabble with perfection, his fans asked, especially when the man doing the dabbling is the production novice Jamie Smith, better known as Jamie xx, from the Mercury-Prize-winning trio The xx. But young Smith had already shown himself capable of more than just the future-proofed indie rock for which The xx have become known, creating a series of intriguing remixes and solo tracks. Here Smith's sound excels, and blossoms: a melange of creaking bass hums, cascading UK garage drums and washes of electronic noise that sound warm enough to be biological, rather than clinically lifeless - at times he makes computers seem almost to purr. As an accompaniment to Gil Scott-Heron's profound, world-weary words, it slides into place perfectly. NY Is Killing Me resounds with this oddly inspired collision of talent - as Scott-Heron howls "New York is killing me", in a voice full of the wisdom and bitterness of experience, a man a third of his age from suburban south London rearranges it with just the right array of dislocating reverb, dancey drums and 21st-century electronics. The trilling woodblock patterns and synth stabs of <em>Running</em> seem tailor-made for Scott-Heron's soft but always unsettling poetry, and even more so on the melancholic Sunday morning soul of <em>My Cloud</em>. On some tracks, the path Smith carves for Scott-Heron isn't so smooth: <em>The Crutch</em> sees a battering ram of hard drum loops trip over one another for the poet's attention, while <em>Your Soul and Mine</em> pulses with some of dubstep's bass bounce, breaking out of its dance floor sound quite abruptly, with a smash of cymbals. The highlight, though, is the closing track, <em>I'll Take Care Of You</em>, where Smith lets go of his low-fidelity electronic squiggles and aims higher, matching Scott-Heron at his most epic. A grandstanding piano stab leads the charge on the listener's emotions, with a surprisingly appropriate guitar solo foregrounding a grizzled, universal lyric evoking love and anguish. "Don't tell me I don't care," Scott-Heron growls, and you know both of them, for all their differences - young or old, naïve or experienced - really mean it.
