DJ Shadow: classic or dud?

xp
Yes that one. I've got it on Headz but I specifically want the one that starts with some guy talking which I believe is the single version. I have it but when I loaded it up yesterday I discovered it was cracked. Indestructable cds, pah!

Hey, I just found another copy. I have so much shit I don't even know I have. Sorry to have taken up your time. Anyway, while I'm here can i just say I am very much enjoying the DJ Shadow's early records what I am listening to presently. So, classic!

Entroducing was without doubt an absolute classic. In my head.

Maybe it was good timing - it was unlike anything to me at that time,me being a guitar indie fucker.

It had depth and was moving.

Why were his successive releases so shit?

it's on preemptive strike dude

right???

I really liked The Private Press, but I haven't had the stomach to try The Outside yet...

er, Outsider.

High School Band Plays DJ Shadow !

http://ia300108.us.archive.org/2/items/BrianUdelhofenTheShadowPercussionProject/spp.wmv

classic up to and including entroducing, patchy after.

i also liked Private Press. not 100% classic, but damn good.

The Outsider was a mess.

last time I saw him play he got huge boos for anything from the outsider. Eventually he stopped and spent a while explaining to the crowd that he wasn't going to apologise for experimenting, and he'd never make the same record twice, and he had to keep on trying new things.

Really nasty mood in the crowd that night.

maybe he should just apologize for making a shitty record

and selling it to us

making a hyphy track when hyphy is at its peak is not 'experimenting'. more like trying to capitalize lol.

last time I saw him play he got huge boos for anything from the outsider. Eventually he stopped and spent a while explaining to the crowd that he wasn't going to apologise for experimenting, and he'd never make the same record twice, and he had to keep on trying new things.

this sounds really awkward and weird. given a boring, predictable lecture by a dude you paid to see rock the decks???

I saw him support radiohead some years ago and the crowd ignored him so at least he got a reaction. Which is better, maybe?

paying dj shadow to 'rock the decks' -- ya got burned.

Yeh, I think he was also trying to say "you ain't from the Bay, so you aren't gonna get hyphy aw fuck it here's Organ Donor"

I hate all that backpacker, old-school "jiggy hip hop sucks, it was better in the olden days" shit.

those backpack rappers, always talking about jiggy hiphop

Yeah, always moaning about it. Back in the 90s, anyway.

I hate all that jiggy, old-school "backpacker-baiting sucks, it was much more fun in the olden days" shit.

"i also liked Private Press. not 100% classic, but damn good.

-- one time"

yeah, i think that record is pretty underrated.

I can't take anything he does that features non-sampled vocals. Classic otherwise.

Also true he is prone to delivering boring lectures mid-show, but so is Robert Fripp and he rates classic as well.

Private Press is ruddy excellent and I'll fight anyone who claims otherwise.

private press is a great coming-down album

last time I saw him play he got huge boos for anything from the outsider. Eventually he stopped and spent a while explaining to the crowd that he wasn't going to apologise for experimenting, and he'd never make the same record twice, and he had to keep on trying new things.

this sounds really awkward and weird. given a boring, predictable lecture by a dude you paid to see rock the decks???

huge boos vs. big hoos

i have defeated huge boos fyi

those backpack rappers, always talking about jiggy hiphop

-- and what, Saturday, March 8, 2008 10:48 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

with the hippin and the hoppin and the bippin and the boppin

man i still love endtroducing

yes

still love preemptive strike too

i never got private press i should

I downloaded the 4-track era comp the other day. Have not listened yet tho

xpost. that's where i got off the bus. There's no standout tracks that I can remember and an awful use of a sample of "El condor pasa".

Off 'You Can't Go Home Again'? That's one of his all-time best tracks!

private press is so underrated

great tempo:

private press >>> endtroducing imo

u crazy

i listen to private press way more

i just feel like that condor pasa sample doesn't at all fit in with that bit of music at all.

i have fond memories of driving around milwaukee and hearing some tracks on college radio before it came out and just knowing it was new dj shadow.

xp it does seem kind of out of place/tempo but it works for me, it balances it out the electro stuff.

cute:

Anyone going to pretend the Outsider was his best thing.

*crickets*

private press >>> endtroducing imo

Yep. The highlights of Endtroducing are better, but PP is a far more consistent and coherent album.

The school band version reminded me of this:

The El Condor Pasa sample in You Can't Go Home Again is in that sweet area right on the edge of sounding wrong.

I don't think it's very codified, if you're doing it by the book you need to reach out to all the publishers and come to an agreement with each one. At the very least it's a big hassle that might end up with having to lose/replace/redo some samples, and then the artist probably isn't making much money from the record if it's entirely sample-based. But since no one makes money off records anymore, maybe he should just say fuck it and making Endtroducing 2?

The Private Press is still my favorite one btw (and maybe that was his interim solution, mostly sampling records not associated with major labels?).

Some interesting bits here: https://thequietus.com/articles/31624-dj-shadow-private-press-review-anniversary

He'd already set a few rules here: while, working on U.N.K.L.E.'s Psyence Fiction, he had allowed himself the leeway of using musicians to play things when sampling wasn't going to work, for The Private Press he refused to use any musical ingredients that didn't come from previously released records. The hugely influential Brainfreeze mix, made with Cut Chemist in 1999, found the pair only allowing themselves to use 7" 45rpm singles. Its all-45 follow-up, Product Placement, incorporated numerous 7"s released to promote some product or other, and recreated a fans' favourite sequence from Brainfreeze using different versions of the same tracks in a kind of "cover version" of part of the earlier mix.

The delight in accomplishing such absurdly, arbitrarily and unnecessarily difficult tasks was clear: so it was little surprise that there would be challenge he would set for himself here, and that it would be of another order of magnitude altogether. With the notable exception of its introductory cry of "What you gon' do now?", which comes from a 1977 United Artists release by The Whitney Family, on 'Monosyllabik' Shadow forced himself to make an entire track using only sounds he could make out of the first two bars of that privately pressed late-period funk 45. He began by cutting the two bars into 32 pieces, then set about attacking them in the studio, using only outboard gear and analogue equipment - no plug-ins or computers. Microphones were set up to record the sound being played in different ways from different speakers, then fed back through the system and spat out in new shapes, each to be reforged, sifted, rearranged and reconstructed in a process he compared to stop-motion animation.

He's never seemed interested in trying to do an Endtroducing 2. Which is okay because there were a bunch of other producers who tried to do it.

And that's the right attitude I think, it's just too bad he's not left with a fruitful alternative, apparently.

FWIW, re: ticket prices, the Webster Hall show is $35. If you purchase it online (via axs) they add $17 in fees. Webster Hall still runs a box office, but it's only open during evenings when they have a show going on (which thankfully is most evenings in general) - if go there when doors open (typically 6 or 7pm), you can get tickets for upcoming shows without paying those additional fees.

I only started doing this in the past year or two, and the savings really add up. The only indoor venue I've gone to that doesn't do this is City Winery (only members get fees waived). Anyway, the show's four months away, so I doubt it'll sell out imminently.

The delight in accomplishing such absurdly, arbitrarily and unnecessarily difficult tasks

I feel like this is a good description of the energy that comes through in his best material.

The Private Press still has it. I like that record overall, I should probably revisit. A few of the tracks are up there with Endtroducing material for me, but it starts to feel sort of scattered in the second half of the album, like an awkward back and forth between slow moody beats and fast, frenetic beats, at least that's my memory of it.

The More You Know is also a bit of a "return to form" if not on the same level. I should probably revisit that one too.

there are some sample heavy albums I look at as “endtroducing-adjacent” but with different vibes

since i left you = endtroducing on ecstasy
ptaki przelot = endtroducing in 80s poland

I consider Since I Left You my "Endtroducing 2".

Also DJ Frane's records help scratch that itch too.

Wish someone would drop an all sample based album that's blatantly illegal to show how beautiful the artform can be without legal limitations and just release it to the public domain as an act of protest or something

Oh nice timing there brimstead

Maybe I need to give Since I Left You another spin - the few times I heard it I thought it sounded a little too perfect. I don't know the other one.

Com Truise sometimes scratches an Endtroducing sort of itch even though it's synthy and not samply.

Four Tet 'Rounds' is definitely Endtroducing-adjacent/entirely samples.

I wonder what the post-Ableton warping Endtroducing is. Or maybe we only got mashups/edits/Girl Talk once sampling became easy and user-friendly. Thinking through all the L.A. beat scene stuff there were definitely samples, but it leaned much harder on original production.

Maybe I need to give Since I Left You another spin - the few times I heard it I thought it sounded a little too perfect. I don't know the other one.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, November 10, 2023 12:22 PM

thought it was just me all these years! listening again for the first time since it was new and i still get absolutely nothing out of this music.

anyway yeah, endtroducing was lightning in a bottle and our friend mr davis just happened to be the one to catch it.

DJ Frane's Journey to the Planet of Birds is a legit masterpiece imho. Vibes more with Private Press era DJ Shadow. But I love all of Frane's albums. They're made with a lot of love and cannabis

did dj shadow sample anything from herbie mann’s stone flute? some serious gothtempo vibes there