It is with great excitement that I can now officially announce that the new Sage Francis album “Copper Gone” will be coming out on my label, Speech Development, in the UK.
I’ve spent a week deliberating over how to announce this. I put my label manager hat on and thought about putting together a playlist of Sage’s back catalogue to go with the announcement to remind those that know and initiate those that don’t.
I thought about doing some kind of deal in my webstore. Half price everything when brought with the pre-order.
But then I decided to take off my label manager hat, and just be a fan again.
You see…I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if I hadn’t borrowed my brothers copies of those first few Sage albums and mixtapes, so when Sage sent through the finished record I was insanely excited.
When I finished I thought one thing:
“I can’t wait for Alan to hear this”
Let me explain…
When I was first getting into Personal Journals and the mixtapes around it my friend Alan and I would listen to them on repeat while at work putting records on shelves.
We listened to every word, every breath, every pause.
As Sage released more albums, whilst I loved the developments, the movements from the poetic to the hard rap, from the internal to the external…somewhere down the line Alan stopped feeling it.
He still loved Personal Journals and those early Sick of tapes but he kind of left it there. Now, things like that are often as much down to personal life or taste changes as anything else. Or sometimes you fall so in love with one collection of songs that anything different from them just won’t do.
I get that. I’ve had it happen to me as a fan and I’m damn sure I’ve had it happen with my own fans.
So when I finished my first listen to “Copper Gone” that buzz was immense. This feels like the follow up to Personal Journals that couldn’t have been written without years of living under the belt. It was a strange listen in many ways. At this stage, I consider Sage a good friend and, as becomes apparent pretty quickly, he has clearly had to go through some shit to get to this point. This record is possibly his most personal to date and its far from all roses. So, as a friend, I felt a certain sadness. But as a fan? Well…shit…some of the best art is born of adversity. And I’m fucking grateful for this record. I think I levelled it out by deciding I was glad Sage had got through these tough times and made something beautiful from them.
Since he sent it over, I’ve listened to Copper Gone around 15 times.
I still can’t wait for Alan to hear it.
And I cant wait for all of you to hear it too…
June 2nd 2014
Pre-order now on CD or gatefold double GOLD VINYL at scroobiuspip.co.uk/store
Strange Famous ≠ Speech Development
And we just getting started…