Serj Tankian and Tom Morello Contribute to Gang of Four Tribute Album

The pair will cover "Natural's Not in It" for 'The Problem of Leisure'

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Dec 2, 2020

A new Gang of Four tribute album has been announced, and System of a Down's Serj Tankian and Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello are among the contributors. The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, will see release in May 2021.

Tankian and Morello will come together for its first single, a cover of Gang of Four's "Natural's Not in it," on January 1, which would have been Andy Gill's 65th birthday. That same month, a complete tracklist of participating artists will be revealed.

"Andy Gill was one of a handful of artists in history who changed the way guitars are played," Morello said in a statement. "His band Gang of Four were just incendiary and completely groundbreaking with Andy's confrontational, unnerving and sublime playing at the forefront. His jagged plague-disco raptor-attack industrial-funk deconstructed guitar anti-hero sonics and fierce poetic radical intellect were hugely influential to me."

Andy Gill passed away in February at age 64. Press materials explain the late artist had been planning The Problem of Leisure as a celebration of Gang of Four's 40th anniversary of Entertainment! last year.

"Andy was massively excited about this project," Gill's widow Catherine Mayer said. "It wasn't, of course, conceived as a tribute album, but it's comforting to me that he lived to see artists he hugely admired enthusiastically agreeing to participate, signalling that the admiration was mutual."

You can find a video featuring Meyer below, and can find Damien Hirst's artwork for The Problem of Leisure above. Of his cover art, Hirst offered the following:

Everybody who grew up with Gang of Four in their lives can remember how mind-blowing and forward-thinking and filled with creative energy it was at the time and guess what? It still is now. It's art. Art that's reaching out of this world yet somehow still down to earth. It's so great to be involved with this release and to see and hear a new generation of musicians paying tribute to Andy Gill's incredible music. My artwork 'Dog with Bone,' which Andy picked for the cover from a few ideas I had, is from a new series of giant pipe cleaner animals based on little ones made in my studio by kids. I think he wanted this work for the cover because it's new and unexpected and in your face and hard not to like, they make adults feel like children and Andy always wanted to celebrate that.

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