Track Listing

1. Best Foot Forward
2. Building Steam with a Grain of Salt
3. Number Song
4. Changeling/Transmission 1
5. What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 4
6. Stem/Long Stem/Transmission 2
7. Mutual Slump
8. Organ Donor
9. Why Hip Hop Sucks in '96
10. Midnight in a Perfect World
11. Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain
12. What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 1: Blue Sky Revisit

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148212 in Music
• Released on: 1996-12-10
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
DJ Shadow, a.k.a. Josh Davis, could be credited with bringing newfound introspection to the gloating sounds of hip-hop. Condensed with urban oscillations and scatological beats, Endtroducing shutters with eclectic samples and aural montages that reach beyond the constraints of hip-hop style. Enhancing the mix with fundamentals of rock, soul, funk, ambient, and jazz, the modern fusions fail to go unnoticed, even by the casual listener. While most of the tracks are compiled by layering samples from vinyl treasures found in used-record bins, the production quality of the mosaic is unmatched. Darkened melodies carry throughout the album with its eye on the end of the tunnel. The narration samples come from numerous sources and keep the listener involved and waiting for resolution. With a message as fragmentary as an overheard conversation, Endtroducing conveys no apparent conclusion, but begs the mind, body, and soul for some rewind. Universal. 2004.

Amazon.com
DJ Shadow, a.k.a. Josh Davis, could be credited with bringing newfound introspection to the gloating sounds of hip-hop. Condensed with urban oscillations and scatological beats, Endtroducing shutters with eclectic samples and aural montages that reach beyond the constraints of hip-hop style. Enhancing the mix with fundamentals of rock, soul, funk, ambient, and jazz, the modern fusions fail to go unnoticed, even by the casual listener. While most of the tracks are compiled by layering samples from vinyl treasures found in used-record bins, the production quality of the mosaic is unmatched. Darkened melodies carry throughout the album with its eye on the end of the tunnel. The narration samples come from numerous sources and keep the listener involved and waiting for resolution. With a message as fragmentary as an overheard conversation, Endtroducing conveys no apparent conclusion, but begs the mind, body, and soul for some rewind. --Lucas Hilbert

Customer Reviews

The master of aural collage makes his debut.
In 1998 I had a crush on a girl named Ellie. On a rainy day we decided on an awkward quasi-date to Rasputin's Records and Blondie's Pizza. I sat down in the passenger seat of her beat-up Accord, she started the engine, and her tape player introduced me to a twinkling piano and hypnotizingly slow breakbeats. The notes fell like raindrops on her windshield, and forever in my mind, that moment, Ellie's perfume, my nervous tension, and DJ Shadow's "Building Steam With A Grain of Salt" were locked inseparably together. Whenever the rain starts to fall -- not a hard rain and not a sprinkle, but a steady, plodding, relentless patter of water on earth -- I think of this song.

Josh Davis, also known as DJ Shadow, makes that kind of impact with the arcane record samples he artfully merges into cohesive, thoughtful, revelatory aural collages. He is obsessed. He digs up sounds you and I have never heard before, and maybe a thing or two we have heard before, and fuses them into some brilliant new heterogeneous dream with the power to stir the subconscious and induce sheer awe.

Once I bought his CD and broke free of the hold that "Building..." had on me, I got accustomed to the other twelve tracks of the album. There were many pleasant surprises. I found "Midnight in a Perfect World" just as addicting as the song that got me hooked in the first place, a loping, seductive, scratch-heavy, impossibly beautiful five minutes and two seconds. "Changeling" was another fast favorite, like a lush sunset after a long summer day. "Stem/Long Stem" creeped me out with pernicious string samples surrounding a single lonely chime. And although it took some time, "Mutual Slump" eventually won me over with its dual personality: crashing percussion and ugly guitar riffs on the one hand, and a mournful, echoing backdrop offset by a shy girl's spoken diary on the other.

Many have already mentioned what an impact this album had on a number of prominent artists such as Moby and Radiohead. DJ shadow's influence has reverberated for several years now in the music industry. But for me, I can only attest to what it did for me when seated next to an unreachable girl, in the midst of my quixotic quest, on a gray and rainwashed early spring afternoon.

It was nothing short of an epiphany.

Splice World
"Entroducing..." is perhaps one of the most amazing albums in the world of music. While an album that is built entirely off of samples may have some think of Puff Daddy's theft of '80's songs, Shadow is far from the sampling of Puff Daddy. Shadow loops interesting samples from forgotten and obscure songs. He layers samples from different records and uses odd effects to create strange soundscapes. If you give this album a listen, you will be hooked. Check out "The Numbers Song" (a Metallica guitar loop mixed with soul and hip-hop records? Where else have you heard that?), "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain", and "Midnight In A Perfect World". For more Shadow, check out Preemptive Strike which features his first masterpiece "In/Flux" and the entire "What Does Your Soul Look Like" EP. Pick this up and prepare to be amazed.

Producing one of the best albums ever
From the opening sample of "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt" where a voice is heard saying "Producing..." you know you are listening to an outstanding piece of work. In order to better understand this, you have to position yourself at the time this album came out.

You have to realize Trip Hop was already in full fledge: Massive Attack and Portishead had already come out with their own thing, but DJ Shadow came with a different proposal in 1996 when he produced 'Endtroducing...'. Through the magic of samples, he blended in a way many have tried to copy, yet no one yet matched, genres such as rock, soul, funk, ambient, and jazz, into a final product that transcends time. If you need further proof of that, think how long it's been since this album came out (1996) as you are reading this, sit back, listen to it and be amazed, as so many have been amazed to this day.

After listening to 'Endtroducing...' almost daily for three weeks now, turning back and thinking of acts such as Fatboy Slim almost feels awkward, considering his sample-based 'Better Living Through Chemistry' came out almost a full year after Shadow's debut. Granted that everyone has a place in music, DJ Shadow's genius with sampling work simply is above and beyond, making this not only his breakthrough, but also one of the best albums ever.

Other favorite tracks: "Changeling", "Untitled" and the grandieuse "Mutual Slump". If you want to take a dip into an evolved form of his work, check out his side project, U.N.K.L.E., in particular 'Psyence Fiction'.