The first album reissued from his catalogue is I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, which is available on digital platforms from today (6 December).
I'll Sleep When You're Dead was originally released in 2007 via El-P's own Definitive Jux label, and features collaborations with Trent Reznor, Cat Power, and many more.
Speaking about I'll Sleep When You're Dead, El-P says, "This record means a lot to me. Really, it’s a collection of short stories written from multiple perspectives… Different characters living in the same confused, askew city of 'Poisenville'. No one is right in these stories and no one has the moral high ground but everyone is trying to keep themselves from suffocating under the weight of their own reality and faults."
He adds, "A guy on a train asks a question he doesn’t really want answered… A concentration camp guard flirts with morality and ultimately chooses obedience… An older, pessimistic man thinks he's doing the right thing by ending his relationship with a younger, optimistic woman but cant help but self-aggrandize… A young man responds angrily to a draft letter... A lost soul is trying to find connections in a party scene only to realize he’s more alone than ever… An atheist makes an emergency plea to god on a plane that he knows he hasn’t earned… A man sits on a brooklyn stoop at dawn fully realizing his own bullshit self-justifications and rejects them… It’s littered with darkness and doubt but ultimately it’s about redemption. It’s about the decision not to succumb to the darkest ideas we have about what we are. I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead began as what I imagined the city of 'Poisenville' was saying to its inhabitants as a retort to being called a 'city that never sleeps', but it ends with the discovery of something bigger than the maze of inner turmoil these characters feel: a resolve to fight for life, even if it's someone else’s."
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