The room › Artists › Gil Scott-Heron
Where to start with Gil Scott-Heron
Start with The Revolution Will Not Be Televised — Pieces of a Man, 1971. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 18 Gil Scott-Heron tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 18 Gil Scott-Heron tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 18 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The collection leans hard on one record: 13 of the 18 tracks come from Pieces of a Man alone.
The dates here run from 1971 to 2018. They are the dates attached to the releases in this room rather than recording dates, so the later ones are likely reissues — but 47 years is still more than one version of the artist.
The tracks are filed across 5 genres, most often soul, spoken word and jazz, so the room does not treat this as a single-shelf artist.
The mood knob swings 65 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised — Pieces of a Man, 1971. Of the 16 Gil Scott-Heron tracks here that have actually been listened to, this one sits closest to the average of them across the four knobs the room runs on. The other 2 arrived carrying the default for their genre, and averaging a placeholder in would move the centre towards nothing. It is the least surprising thing among the tracks that were read, which is what an entry point should be.
If you want the melancholy end
Pieces of a Man — Pieces of a Man, 1971. The lowest mood reading of any Gil Scott-Heron track in the room (17 out of 100). This is as far towards melancholy as the collection goes.
If you want the euphoric end
'B' Movie (Intro, Poem, Song) — Reflections, 1981. The highest mood reading here, at 82 out of 100 — a 65-point swing across the collection towards euphoric.
Where Gil Scott-Heron sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Gil Scott-Heron's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Pieces of a Man | 1971 | 13 |
| Reflections | 1981 | 1 |
| Aint Really A Life | 2018 | 1 |
| The Revolution Will Not Be Televised | 1974 | 1 |
| Free Will | 1972 | 1 |
| Live At The Town & Country 1988 | 2008 | 1 |
Every Gil Scott-Heron track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| A Sign of the Ages | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| A Toast to the People | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| Chains | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| Home Is Where the Hatred Is | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| I Think I'll Call It Morning | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| Or Down You Fall | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| Peace | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| Pieces of a Man | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| Save the Children | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| The Needle's Eye | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| The Prisoner | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| The Revolution Will Not Be Televised | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| When You Are Who You Are | Pieces of a Man | 1971 |
| Ain't No New Thing | Free Will | 1972 |
| Lady Day and John Coltrane | The Revolution Will Not Be Televised | 1974 |
| 'B' Movie (Intro, Poem, Song) | Reflections | 1981 |
| We Almost Lost Detroit - Live | Live At The Town & Country 1988 | 2008 |
| The Bottle | Aint Really A Life | 2018 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Gil Scott-Heron's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Shuggie Otis — soul, 18 tracks
- Where to start with Stevie Wonder — soul, 16 tracks
- Where to start with Sam Cooke — soul, 12 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Gil Scott-Heron as a solo artist, from Chicago, the United States and born in 1949. Its contributors tag the artist jazz-funk, jazz poetry and soul jazz. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Gil Scott-Heron tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 18, across 6 albums. 18 of them carry a date, running from 1971 to 2018. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. 16 of these 18 tracks have been read that way. The other 2 arrived with the default for their genre and nobody has listened to them yet, so they are left out of the centre, the ends and the spread quoted above.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 18 of these 18 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.