There can be few albums more eagerly awaited than the next release from south-west London's purveyors of intimacy, the xx. But while the Mercury prize‑winning trio's second album is still very much under construction, various x's have been limbering up with extracurricular tunes.
Romy Madley Croft recently contributed a sultry vocal to a track called "Days", by digital duo Creep. While Oliver Sim has lain low, band producer Jamie Smith has turned out remixes by the fistful – such as his sparse, dancehall deconstruction of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep". "Far Nearer", meanwhile, was posted online under his own name last autumn. Harnessing steel pans and dubstep echo, it confirmed that Smith had made himself at home in his adoptive Brixton in more ways than one.
By far his most significant endeavour, however, is Smith's full-length remix of Gil Scott-Heron's splendid comeback album of last year, I'm New Here – perhaps the most ironic ever nominee for best international newcomer at the Brits. Although the venerable American poet gets top billing here, this is really a Smith solo effort that merely uses Scott-Heron samples as a springboard. Smith's boss, XL Recordings capo Richard Russell, produced I'm New Here himself, with the sound of the xx's debut echoing in his head.
It follows that the 21-year-old Smith should tear up Russell's soundbed entirely and showcase his own emerging versatility. So the dazzling first track, "I'm New Here", pits Scott-Heron's gruff spoken word ("I met a woman in a bar…") against a sped-up Gloria Gaynor sample ("I met him at a party…") to set up a his-and-hers call-and-response and crown this deeply thrumming dubstep track. It is nothing like the track of the same name off last year's album, much less the acoustic original, by Smog's Bill Callahan.
The song that proves Smith is truly a master of his craft is "Running", another track whose relationship with its original is largely incidental. Fat, muffled beats play off against cut-up samples and a superbly woozy hook. The lack of urgency mirrors Scott-Heron's harsh assertion: there is no such thing as an "away" to run to.
Smith's parents introduced him to Scott-Heron's music when he was growing up. It was this sense of ownership, perhaps, that allowed Smith to plunder the troubled polemicist's 70s work as well as his recent output – a process that apparently required writing longhand letters by post to Scott-Heron for his blessing. "My Cloud" recalls the distant time, before crack and ruin, when Scott-Heron's voice was young and sweet. Its thoroughly contemporary backing is both hydraulic and bucolic.
But this sinuous record does not pass without regrets. "Home" is a classic track that fares less well. At the risk of sounding like folk fundamentalist Pete Seeger on the occasion of Bob Dylan going electric, the lyrics of one of Scott-Heron's most powerful songs about the desolation of drug abuse are too important to be subsumed, no matter how elegant the cascades of ersatz marimba. While Smith's productions are consistently excellent, they aren't really there to augment Scott-Heron's words, but rather to keep appetites whetted for what Smith will do next.
