Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Winter in America

Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's Winter in America returns in a limited, remastered gatefold edition, still one of the most quietly powerful records of the 1970s.

Recorded in late 1973 at a studio in Silver Spring, Maryland, and released the following year on the independent jazz label Strata-East, it was the pair's only album for the label. Distribution was patchy and copies quickly became scarce, yet word of mouth, and one very unlikely hit, carried it far further than anything they had made before.

That hit was "The Bottle", a loping, flute-driven groove about addiction that somehow became a dancefloor favourite. Around it, the record is stripped back and intimate, built on Jackson's jazz and blues piano and Scott-Heron's rich, weary baritone. "Rivers of My Fathers" is a long, aching meditation on roots and belonging, while "H2Ogate Blues" turns the Watergate scandal into a spoken-word takedown as funny as it is furious. "Peace Go with You, Brother" bookends the album with a gentle blessing.

Critics overlooked it at first, but it has since been embraced as their finest work together and a key influence on neo soul and hip hop.

Half a century on, its warmth and its warnings feel just as urgent, and this edition gives them the care they deserve.