DJ Shadow - Endtroducing.....

SYSTEM-J, May 27, 2006

Endtroducing wasnt the first record built out of samples. It wasnt the first instrumental hip-hop record. It wasnt the first record to gain critical success despite being primarily the work of others. DJ Shadow openly declares himself an apostle of sample culture, name-checking as many legendary hip-hop producers as you like. He makes no attempt to disguise what hes doing.

Endtroducing is an album that solidifies beyond all doubt the artistic power of sampling. Using pieces of other peoples music in your own compositions was not born with the sampler and neither was it with hip-hops trick of looping the best bits of other peoples music to create dancefloor explosive. However, Dad rockers everywhere will forever protest against sampling, labelled it theft. Theyre wrong. Endtroducing buries the argument. Music is art, and art is expression. How you get there is irrelevant provided the art is worth interpreting.

If theres a theme to Endtroducing, its one of mortality. Almost all the samples on Endtroducing are taken from forgotten horror film scores, long-dead jazz records and ancient funk. With the occasional exception, most of the sounds will be new to you. All of this is forgotten today- Shadow has borrowed from obscure sources that history will not acknowledge. But unlike so many other samplers, Shadow has respect for these tracks. Endtroducing is an album that showcases music wed never otherwise hear, simply because it wasnt big enough at the time to impact into the history books. In thirty years time most of our favourite records of today will probably be discarded in a similar way, and all the stars and egos at the top now will have been forgotten. The contextless dialogue snippets borrowing from recorded interviews and films strengthen this theme- we witness snatches of scenes and moments and thoughts long since buried in the sands of time. Endtroducing is about respect for the people who paved the way for todays zeitgeist.

But forget that- Endtroducing is exhalted so highly because its brilliant. It sounds gorgeous- built out of the most emotive fragments of the entire career of a musician. It sounds like a post-modern film noir score: saxaphones, strings, violins, pianos, scratchy guitars meld in with staple hip-hop rhythms, Shadows thick, enveloping basslines and the deftest of synth touches. The low-key production gives it an ageless quality, a smokey, rich texture. Its not just the sound either: we hear pieces of music from far removed sources meeting under a new context and gelling together as the players never would have imagined. Its melancholy, spooky, sad, reflective and chilled. It gently massages your mind, never conjuring overt emotions but suggesting whatever you want it to.

Endtroducing is quite simply an album built out of the love of music: the love of finding and sharing gems and obscurities, the love of preserving the work of people who wont get their due acknowledgement, and the sheer love of making great music, no matter what the techniques. If you love music, then you should own it because its one of the best records youll ever hear.

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