DJ Shadow: classic or dud?

this remix of 6 days is a soundtrack classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUlqk1F3wn0

this one was kinda ~balaeric~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7rZGZLbsLs

'high noon' and 'organ doner' are also classic non-endtroducing cuts. tbh i think every album of his is inconsistent or has boring parts, but there's peaks across the whole catalog (until he started making hyphy music)

I've been trying to figure out where the hell I put my signed Private Press tour poster. Hope I didn't lose it in a move.

I'd say something about how it seems like forever ago that I was hanging around listening to Endtroducing and all the random remixes and singles a friend had hoarded, but it really has been twenty years!

the headz version of influx is the best one btw

organ donor was on endtroducing, just not the "(extended overhaul)" version which is essential

oh yeah i'm thinking of that one

I still feel like the kool g rap feature from unkle goes extremely hard

Pre emptive is as essential as endtrouducing. Private press has blood on the motorway which is classic

unkle is similar to shadow in that they started strong and dropped off with quickness

I still feel like the kool g rap feature from unkle goes extremely hard

― Vapor waif (uptown churl), Monday, March 12, 2018 1:05 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree

Pre emptive is as essential as endtrouducing. Private press has blood on the motorway which is classic

― kolakube (Ross), Monday, March 12, 2018 1:16 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was the other one i was gonna mention from that album. three high points miminimum

Fixed Income, Walkie Talkie, Six Days are my favs from that one. Also still think a lot about "ECOUTEZ/COUTEZ/COUTEZ SIT A VOUS/AVOUS/AVOUS POUR LE DANCE/DANCE/DANCE"

I can’t recall exactly what tracks I liked off private press, I just remember the drums being sick as fuck

some of the longer tracks on preemptive strike are so good

in/flux

prefer the Headz version to the Pre Emptive Strike one

i like both!

Everybody otm. I also like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RFtLELeXVU

This is v good fun too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfmpeo85IMs

http://www.waxpoetics.com/blog/features/gallery/dj-shadow-begins/

I'll defend the Private Press and its surrounding b-sides/remixes.

Ultimately it was disappointing, but how could he have possibly improved on Endtroducing? That being said, I've always thought 'Six Days' and 'Blood on the Motorway' are as good as anything from Endtroducing.

I’m not brimming with confidence that this is a broadly applicable opinion and it probably wouldn’t have been possible anyway, but: I feel like if Shadow had been able to put out Psyence Fiction as his sophomore album (instead of a friendly jumpstart for James Lavelle’s solo project that Lavelle would largely fail to build on) then The Private Press would’ve been a perfectly acceptable third record. His audience would have gotten the Endtroducing sound but bigger, more lavish, and with special guests, and they’d be looking for the kind of differences that Private Press offered instead of clamoring for the former thing from a record that didn’t have it. I’m not saying it would’ve necessarily prevented the panic spiral that constituted the next decade or so of his career, but he’d at least have been in a better headspace to avoid it.

All of this of course being predicated upon my (admittedly not universal) opinion that Psyence Fiction lives up to the weighty reputation of Endtroducing, but even given the less charitable takes on that record I think it’d survive the sophomore-record scrutiny better than The Private Press did.

That's a good point, psyence was definitely a transitional record

does he still do a quick break in the middle of organ donor to do it "live" by having the different organ notes on different sampler pads? it's one of those ideas that is so goofy that it worked

This remix is also pretty essential

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYE2x3gVMuM

Private Press still my favorite in 2018

― change display name (Jordan), Monday, March 12, 2018 4:22 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100% agree ... it's the only DJ Shadow album that I still listen to.

Shadow also deserves a lot of credit for his work as a funk/breaks DJ imo, and as far as I can tell he was kind of on the leading edge of the whole rare funk thing that blew up later.

i mean, rap producers were, lol but yeah

man alive otm

dj shadow / cut chemist - freeze dvd is an essential document as well

I highly recommend listening to his "Gourmet Dog Shit" ep of the Dogpatch podcast!

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZsH1UM2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpVpUb78YzA

excited for this! i like the single.

https://i.imgur.com/2CHgQA0.jpg

couldn't make it through more than 10 seconds of any track on new album. really unpleasant music.

whoa jesus that bad???! Like The Outsider bad? his last was fairly decent given its submission towards current trends rather than attempting to redefine his sound on top of it.

more unlistenable than Jesus is King?

lol Kanye + gospel could not be more repellant to me, haven't heard it
this sounds like a shitty mowax album from 2002 you'd find in discount bins 2 months after it was released. No idea what he was going for, it's all over the place. Either tuneless techno workouts or boring aimless triphop.

the 2nd half is with rappers huh. Not as bad as 1st but I just don't have the energy now to dig thru it for possible gems.

his songs with rappers are almost never good, at least post-Solesides

mo'wax went under in 2002 and only released a couple of things that year, but they stand out among the best in the mo'wax catalog

1. jordan fields' luminous deep house album "moments in dub"

2. parsley sound's elephant-six-alike s/t album

3. dj shadow's "the private press"

also released a couple of mostly forgettable but otherwise acceptable singles by skelf (howie b doing progressive breaks) and malcolm catto that year

but no aimless trip hop or tuneless techno in 2002

Lol wtf

just sayin

Mo wax didn't seem exactly right to me but I couldn't think of another label from around then plus shadow was involved with them and good god it's a simile I didn't expect the music nerd police

i didn't expect the music nerd police

on ILM?

ha. Private Press is great and heartfelt.

his songs with rappers are almost never good, at least post-Solesides

I liked the De La track that came out a few months ago, could have taken an EP of them teaming up

mo'wax went under in 2002 and only ...

I love this place sometimes.

this is a terrible album tho

ha i listened to that Parsley Sounds album 100 times. That's what Elephant 6 sounds like? I should check those guy out

i just got that mixed up in my head with "Cage the Elephant" who is someone i saw Beck was touring with

pay me no mind

I have that Parsley Sound album, need to listen to it again.

Picked up the new DJ Shadow because I’d been listening to ‘Endtroducing’ and ‘Private Press’ recently and...it’s not either of those.

Read an interview with him recently where he talks about having learned more studio skills recently, and I think there’s sometimes a relationship between “later career enthusiasm for learning technical aspects of craft” and “making duller music”.

Listening to Endtroducing recently I was thinking that part of what I love about the record is the way Shadow acts as a drum/percussion soloist on the MPC. Maybe that had been done before, but it was what made the record feel so fresh to me when I first heard it as a teenager and so different from other sample-based records that were mainly about loops. Also the oddly pleasing dissonances created by the samples brushing against one another, which I wonder if it was partly accidental. Like it's actually a harmonically and melodically interesting album too, and it's not just individual loops by jazz fusion dudes that make it so.

The beat on the Run The Jewels track is horrible, the De La Soul song is way better

I remember the first thing previewed off of Private Press was "Monosylabik" and he was talking about how it's based on a one second thing chopped a thousand different ways and it took months to do... and hearing it and just thinking.. ok good for you...... Thankfully there was plenty more going on with that album.