DJ Shadow - Endtroducing 2xLP

Label: Mo Wax

Our Review:

One of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut. DJ Shadow's masterpiece is a brillant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the peculiar Swedish '60s psych-folkster Pugh Rogefeldt or a super-early bombastic b-side from Giorgio Moroder) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either!