DJ Shadow: classic or dud?

new one leaked

Anyone hearing this? Drunk in AC right now and its sounding good

It's amaaaaazing! Such a relief after the wtf misstep of The Outsider. Welcome back!

dj shadow is an angry -- and sometimes funny -- fellow (e.g., 10th worst thing about the music industry is "Too much Shakira, not enough Charo. At least Charo was in on the joke.")
.

Just threw on In Tune And On Time. Really solid live dj record. Too bad he fell off so hard -- any standout tracks from his last couple? I can barely listen to them.

He and Cut Chemist are now touring and spinning vinyl from Afrika Baambaata's large vinyl archive. I dunno, kinda would rather hear Baambaata behind the wheels of steel.

can't front on "what does your soul look like", "in/flux / hindsight", "lost & found / s.f.l." EPs imo ... destroy everything else, i think.

i still have the "brain freeze" and "product placement" mixes. very much less than the sum of their parts. it's great music, if sometimes kinda hokey, and the dj'ing is technically great but somehow underwhelming. maybe should listen again.

i also have a thing where q-bert cuts up and scratches over a bunch of dj shadow tracks. really gotta wonder how that's held up to the test of time ...

i think the "brain freeze" / "product placement" issue boils down to they don't know when to stop, they keep piling shit on.

i still like psyence fiction too.

Endtroducing is awesome! Fuck all the revisionist critic shit like "so many fools pretended to like that album when it came out"

have never been convinced by endtroducing. plodding compared to the earlier EPs.

'the private press' is super underrated

by who?!?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Press

^ check the ratings

if anything i would say those tracks are overrated over lots of other "big beat" tracks

i just feel like no one mentions it nowadays when talking about DJ Shadow.

btw there's something a little sad about him becoming just another electronic producer making bangers, even if the tracks are pretty decent (mostly for some fun drum programming, which still sounds like him). not that he could have stuck to samples-only, there's no good solution really.

this dude is the definition of overrated

eugh qbert, goofy turntablism is the worst.
endtroducing in great. Nothing on it as plodding as WDYSLL part two.
private press is not good, he lost the magic.

maybe plodding is the wrong word, i don't really mean slow

parts of endtroducing are great but i lose patience with tracks like "stem / long stem" and "napalm brain / scatter brain"

on the the latter, i agree. i didn't really mean slow either, i guess i just meant "dull"

i treat "what do you look like" as an ambient album

endtroducing and preemptive strike (which i think compiles pre-entroducing EPs and other releases) are fucking tremendous. the rest is garbage

'the private press' is super underrated

― festival culture (Jordan)

Yeah, solid album. Maybe more consistent than Endtroducing, though the highs not as high.

Listened to his latest a few months back, left literally no impression.

I wonder what tunes out of Bambaata's collection he spun last night in Maryland (outside DC) and elsewhere on this tour. I haven't googled it (and didn't go obv).

i still have the "brain freeze" and "product placement" mixes.

I hadn't thought of these in years, but for the last few days I've been having some moderate g.i. issues and during one of these episodes I heard a voice in my head saying "Hey. Martial Arts fan. Are you ready to have your GUTS kicked out?"

his tracks on the first headz comp have aged v well too (a different version of the cut on pre-emptive strike). as a dj/producer his stuff w/latyrx and that first quannum LP are pretty underrated imho.

would be interesting to see of the headz comps still hold up, i remember really like them when they came out but i haven't listened in years

I hadn't thought of these in years, but for the last few days I've been having some moderate g.i. issues and during one of these episodes I heard a voice in my head saying "Hey. Martial Arts fan. Are you ready to have your GUTS kicked out?"

― how's life, Tuesday, September 9, 2014 12:19 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yes!

I think that if you don't like Endtroducing you pretty much just don't like shoegazey instrumental hip-hop as a concept, because it really doesn't get any better than that record, or even close to it.

As for Preemptive Strike, I still love this track a lot, which is EXTREMELY plodding and shoegazey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6dD3OMiWO0

love that track so much

One of the rare groove drum samples in that track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFHkVXt47fI

The Private Press is also pretty solid. Speaking of samples I still hear in my head all the time -- "ECOUTEZ-TEZ SIT-A-VOUS-VOUS POUR LE DANCE-DANCE-DANCE"

Somehow he really lost it after that though. I feel like he increasingly tried to demonstrate "versatility" or something instead of continuing to refine and develop the style he was good at.

yea i remember some bullshit about "imitators" and how everybody tried to steal his style and that he wanted to put out music that no one could imitate

could would want to

Just stumbled onto this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArSb3lCc28

he's still inspired as fuck when it comes to mixing (or was 2 years ago)

Made me want to give The Less You Know the Better another chance, it's not as bad as I remembered so far.

Entroducing resonated with me at the time of its release. It broke my mould

Until then, I listened to almost 100% 'punk' guitar and all its forerunners and derivatives.

I bought a new turntable last week and gave this a spin, expecting to be underwhelmed. I have since continued to devour 'guitar' , but in tandem a lot of that other 'electronic' stuff. Loads of music.

Perhaps it was my)non specific) life events that coincided in 1996 (mainly drunk and out having a 'great' time) that left a huge scar I cannot fathom?

I'm totally comfortable ,sat in on a saturday nigh - not wanting to go out- waiting for England to lose at football My wife and kid are playing lego in the front room and I have little inclination to join them . I'm listening to this and it remains fucking gorgeous. Especially side 4. But, not a dud on there. It still really moves me.

I don't care about the semantics. So, why the fuck did I post this red rag...

This is the first promising thing I've heard from him in a number of years:

https://soundcloud.com/massappealrecs/dj-shadow-the-mountain-will-fall?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fmassappealrecs%2Fdj-shadow-the-mountain-will-fall

?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fmassappealrecs%2Fdj-shadow-the-mountain-will-fall

*barf* trap beats + sidechain compression. he needs to stop trying to be hip with the kids.

Yeah, this is totally boring.

he's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. either he repeats his samples & breaks records for diminishing returns or he's just another Low End Theory-ish Soundcloud producer. i feel bad for him.

He should just produce for Bay Area rappers and not worry about his brand. And maybe release more often so it's not some big buzz worthy thing when he does idk

Enh, I dunno. Maybe I'm being too harsh. I do think he's a talented guy with a great ear for developing interesting ideas. He just seems to have imposed upon himself a set of "rules" that he follows too closely.

I do wish that I liked him post-Private Press, but nothing has ever really clicked for me since then.

i liked that one song with david banner

i think of the Gaslamp Killer as one ideal version of what DJS could have evolved into, blending obscure samples and live breaks + synths + turntablism in a way that sounds fresh and personal.

I liked this until the beat came in, then I was out. And the stuff that I liked, I can get from other people. Endtroducing is amazing enough that I can happily let it stand alone as an amazing achievement and not bother with the rest of his catalog (though I do like the early stuff gathered up on Pre-Emptive Strike).

i think of the Gaslamp Killer as one ideal version of what DJS could have evolved into, blending obscure samples and live breaks + synths + turntablism in a way that sounds fresh and personal.

― sam jax sax jam (Jordan), Saturday, April 9, 2016 12:48 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i thought his recent live album (featuring live musicians, iirc) was really interesting, it really goes all over the place and hangs together pretty nicely.

Taking in photographs and articles from/in regards to Charlottesville while listening to Preemptive Strike. Eerily soothing.