Devlin releases his new single, ‘Rewind’ featuring Diane Birch on the 14th January 2012. It is taken from his forthcoming second album, A Moving Picture, released through Island Records on the same date.
‘Rewind’ follows the summer release of Devlin’s top 10 hit, ‘(All Along The) Watch Tower’ featuring Ed Sheeran, and further defines this Dagenham born artist as one of the finest young rappers in the UK today.
Teaming up with US singer-songwriter Diane Birch, Rewind combines both her mournful vocal, tremulous strings, and Devlin’s forlorn reflection on the friends he has lost over the years that can’t be with him to enjoy his success.
Devlin; "The journey I’ve been on these past few years, I wish they could be here to witness it," he says. "A couple of relatives, and friends I’ve lost from the manor I grew up in - it upsets me that they’re not here to enjoy it with me."
The general feel of the new album is epic and, not surprisingly given the title, cinematic. The music is huge, filling every scene, a blend of grimy images and orchestral grandeur.
And the songs are anthemic and dramatic, bittersweet symphonies of synths and strings over which Devlin offers a sometimes sweepingly panoramic, sometimes up close and grittily personal, perspective on life in the capital and its dead-end satellite suburbs.
If A Moving Picture is filmic, it’s not exactly comfortable viewing. It's moving not mawkish, and the pictures Devlin the director presents are less cosily familiar than harsh and all too real.