Piers Barber reviews Jamie xx and Gil Scott-Heron's We're New Here (originally published Tuesday 1st March 2011)

Jamie Smith just loves to remix stuff. Whilst his bandmates take a well earned break from playing the same album to endlessly hysterical audiences, the last few months have seen the xx's chief button pusher lend his own dubstep and two-step twist to a vast variety of releases, from the latest chart toppers (Adele's Rolling In the Deep) to the latest in instrumental hip-hop (Nosaj Thing's Fog), and the frankly bizarre (the Newsnight theme tune). For his first full-length release, Smith turns his remix attention to the majestic jazz and soul of Gil Scott-Heron, ambitiously setting out to add his characteristic urban flavour to the troubled legend's latest full-length offering, I'm New Here. It is a calculated risk, and one that pays off brilliantly.

It should be emphasised from the start that this is not an album that will necessarily possess significant appeal for fans of Jamie's initial chart-topping project. Nor are Scott-Heron's fans likely to be especially enamoured by a reworking of the legendary soul-man's first work in 16 years. In fact, it could be argued that the political poetry and introspective confessions characteristic of Scott-Heron's work perhaps makes him the last artist a relatively unproven dubstep producer should dare go fiddling with.

In the event, it is undeniable that the potency of Scott-Heron's lyrics is lost slightly beneath Smith's drum patterns and bleeping electronics. However, this seems to be slightly missing the point of the record. This is very much Smith's work, with many of the remixes bearing little resemblance to the original recordings. Instead, Smith tastefully employs Scott-Heron's vocals mainly as texture to add a narrative to his layers of snare drums and beeping electronics. Ultimately, Scott-Heron's fragile soul, characterised by its minimalism and the sparseness of its soundscapes, turns out to be the ideal subject material for the remix treatment.

The album begins with shimmering distorted strings, with Scott-Heron muttering how "I'm the closest thing I have/To a voice of reason". The track demonstrates the degree to which the gritty realism of Heron's poetry is remarkably well suited to Smith's brand of murky South London dubstep. His voice adds an unrelenting tension and texture to tracks such as The Crutch and especially Running, over which the troubled vocalist chants how "I always feel like running/Not away, because there is no such place", before giving Smith permission to drop a delicious hip-hop beat with his tantalising utterance of the word "run".

After being apparently underused as the third member of the xx, it is here where we see Smith truly stretching his trackpad finger muscle as a producer. NY Is Killing Me, one of the record's major successes, is an exhilarating demonstration of bouncing dubstep patterning and is a breathtaking pinnacle of this latest UK bass craze, whilst the delicate of I'll Take Care Of You is an understated triumph, led by an elegant guitar piece played by the xx's Madley Croft.

Releasing an album of remixes is a different and infinitely more difficult task than adaptations of single tracks, and it is testament to Smith's dexterity as a producer that he here manages to tastefully move Scott-Heron's work into unlikely and innovative new areas. Smith packs the original compositions to the point that they are brimming with urban melody, and it mostly works perfectly. Smith is a producer of exhilarating potential, and this record is an important work in the development of his own genre. If it also succeeds in broadening Scott-Heron's audience in the process, then so much the better.

4/5