Rami Gabriel Announces Debut Album, 'That's What I've Been Sayin'
Chicago-based punk/experimental/jazz artist Rami Gabriel has announced that he will be releasing his debut album, That’s What I’ve Been Sayin’, on May 24th via Sooper Records. In addition to the record announcement, Gabriel has unveiled the album’s eponymous single and music video, directed by Chicago-based filmmaker Jake Karlson.
In a press release announcing the album and song, Gabriel stated the following:
I recorded it as a rockabilly song. The interesting thing is that I’m singing about America in an American vernacular. There’s a satire of how the empire was extended in this country. In part of it I’m talking as the colonizer: ‘Let’s clear them out. Let’s put up a cotton gin over here. Let’s do that.’ And you have to think, people did this. When you say it, it sounds absurd or it sounds offensive, but this is what happened. So, I’m kind of talking through that. And in a way the absurdity of the situation comes out through that perspective. And then the chorus is ‘that’s what I been sayin’,’ because this is clearly what’s going on. This is history. It’s also a response to this tendency in the discourse to consider history an opinion. History is interpreted, but history is not an opinion. It’s not an opinion that these people were enslaved and brought here. It’s not an opinion that disease and genocide occurred on this land. That’s not an opinion. That happened. We can’t assume that because we interpret it differently, or because the powerful are now in power, that they can change what happened in history. So it’s a way of saying this is what happened, and I’m going to say it in plain speak. That’s the idea behind this song.
The album was recorded in Gabriel’s home on his Tascam 4-track, as well as at the studios of longtime collaborations K-rAd and Alex Hall.
You can check out the video for “That’s What I’ve Been Sayin’ below, and you can click here to pre-order the album.
That’s What I’ve Been Sayin’
1. Like a monk
2. That’s what I been sayin’
3. Bad instincts
4. No good
5. Keep sleeping
6. Too high to die
7. Love stop Hugo
8. Ain’t nobody move me
9. Barely here
10. Buzuq synth
11. The best love
