Last year a friend of mine at XL Records asked me to put together a short mix to help promote Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here album. I was instructed to include a handful of classic Gil tracks along with some of the hip-hop records that sampled them, as well as songs from the new album. In addition I was given some interview snippets with Gil in which he discussed his life and career to try to work in wherever possible.

My end goal – besides integrating all the disparate elements as smoothly as possible – was to capture the stark, somber beauty of I’m New Here – a challenge because the album was so uniquely a piece of its own, an emotional open wound sonically unlike anything he’d recorded before. But I thought it came out well.

As it so happened the mix wound up getting lost in the sauce in the run-up to I’m New Here‘s release. With yesterday’s heart-breaking news of Gil Scott-Heron’s passing, I thought I’d post it up here to share, a brief homage to this legendary artist/activist/thinker, and his brilliant final project. I hope you enjoy it.

For those of us who’ve been indelibly influenced by him there will never be another. Gil Scott-Heron, Rest In Power.

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Exactly how many color-coded secret albums does Feist have? A month or two after discovering the Red Demos, I ran across her Black Session this past weekend. Black Sessions are live recordings, broadcast on the French radio station France Inter during the C’est Lenoir show. Artists like Pulp, Radiohead, Weezer, and apparently, Feist have recorded Black Sessions over the years. These Black Sessions are usually released as extremely limited edition CDs (think 250), and given away as bonuses with other CDs, or sold by France Inter. I’m not sure about the others, but Feist’s Black Session is brilliant. She performs a smattering of songs that would later be seen on Let It Die, along with covers of Broken Social Scene and the Kinks.

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Aquarium Drunkard Joe's Pub tracks

As Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy prepared to embark on what would become a very busy fall of 2006, he played two very special nights at Joe’s Pub in New York City. With brothers Paul and Ned Oldham (Will Oldham/BPB/Palace Music), the trio blistered through nearly 40 covers, nearly all traditionals - playing only one original (“Cursed Sleep” in its pre-release form). Below are three of those shows (all but the first night’s late show).

This is a bootleg of Jeff’s first show ever without Wilco, with Jay Bennett on electric guitar and harmonica. Truly amazing.

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@marshallk This might work, free Mac audio tool: