Track Listing

1. Letter From Home
2. Fixed Income
3. Un Autre Introduction
4. Walkie Talkie
5. Giving Up The Ghost
6. Six Days
7. Mongrel...
8. ...Meets His Maker
9. Right Thing/GDMFSOB
10. Monosylabic
11. Mashin On The Motorway
12. Blood On The Motorway
13. You Can't Go Home Again
14. Letter From Home

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21768 in Music
• Brand: MCA
• Released on: 2002-06-04
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.com
Countless copycats have landed on the bandwagon since Josh Davis's debut, Endtroducing..., wreaked havoc in the dance and hip-hop world. But Davis, a.k.a. DJ Shadow, kept on top of his game with various collaborations--Blackalicious, U.N.K.L.E., Cut Chemist--and superlative 12-inches like "High Noon" and "Pre-Emptive Strike."

Now, a full six years later, he's back with a follow-up that is every bit as impressive as his debut, albeit in a different way. Once again, the producer has pushed his sampler to the limits, but this time he's brought with it a deeper, hungrier, more bad-ass spirit that's rarely found in modern dance music. There's a fabulous '80s vibe throughout (principally on tracks like "Monosylabik" and "You Can't Go Home Again"), along with the expected forays into b-boy culture (check the growling, massive "Treach Battle Break" and the funky-ass "Mashin' on the Motorway"). While it's identifiably Shadow, it ain't Endtroducing...Part 2. It is, however, a worthy and imaginative follow-up, with humor, wisdom, and musical understanding aplenty. --Paul Sullivan

Customer Reviews

Junkmedia.org Review - You can't go home again ...
It is incredibly difficult to release a second full-length album and have it make a strong, positive impression after one's debut release is considered a classic innovation. That is exactly what DJ Shadow is facing with the release of The Private Press. His debut release, Endtroducing..., created a genre. It was based in hip-hop, yet dark and philosophical. Endtroducing... scared people because it seemed like many of the records were specters trying to whisper something in your ear. Call it "cinematic hip-hop" or "ominous turntablism;" there was an incredible rawness to it. Edges weren't smoothed out. Sometimes this was intended, and other times it was a result of the artist jumping headstrong into his first major release. The Private Press will not break ground like Endtroducing... did, but it showcases an older, more versatile Shadow, and in many ways it is a better record.

DJ Shadow's style often unfolds like cinema, with many sweeping scenes that ultimately fit together. This causes several tracks to go well over the seven minute mark. These arresting, epic tracks stand out for their originality and amazing production quality. "Monosylabik" is a track that Shadow himself admitted will be hard for many of his fans to grasp, because it is so different from past work. There is a cold, mechanic quality to the different samples that fly at the listener in rapid, dizzying succession. "Monosylabik" is actually made up of several different sections with dissimilar colors; however, they are linked into a congruous whole by the rhythmic cadence that is present in the melody of each part. Even though the song is somewhat segmented, it works well together as a piece of music.

"Blood on the Motorway" has a mystical feel, and, like other songs in his catalog, it shows Shadow's interest in the afterlife as a theme. Envision the journey that might originate from the time a heart stops beating until a bright light of some sort is encountered, and that's where this epic travels. A three-second silence is boldly placed mid-track, separating the instrumental section from the entrance of the vocal. This increases tension to captivate the listener, while adding to the narrative aspect of the track.

Even though he has one of the largest and most varied record collections in the US, Shadow likes to use primarily newly purchased records to construct each of his releases. Since 99% of his music is sample-dependant, whatever genre predominates local record stores at the time tends to define the album's sound. On The Private Press, that sound is heavy in new wave and '80s rock. "Right Thing" and "You Can't go Home Again" are two tracks on which the "me decade" comes through full force. "You Can't Go Home Again" is the most impressive track on the disc, because it is the first lengthy song that does not bog itself down. Several dramatic changes are not necessary to hold interest in the song, and the upbeat, Devo-style bassline commits the track to memory. "You Can't Go Home Again" is evidence that Shadow has matured, as it makes a strong statement ("here's a story about being free") without having to rely on dark timbres or flailing drum lines to drive the point home.

So, does Shadow play hip-hop, or is it merely an influence of his? Many feel that DJ Shadow does not fit into the traditional hip-hop niche well enough to be classified as part of the genre. Some want to make Shadow a turntablist, while others claim he doesn't scratch or trick enough for this distinction and want to place him in a trip-hop category. As The Private Press continues to show, Shadow is trying to innovate and expand the hip-hop horizon. He recently described his record making process to Jockey Slut Magazine, "To me, it's about manifesting my original understanding of hip-hop, which was taking what's around you, subverting it and spitting it back out through a hip-hop paradigm." RZA continues to dip into the Portishead fountain for Wu-Tang samples, and Madlib uses any bizarre sound/audio filter combination that his spliffed out mind can come up with, and this question does not arise with either of them. The hip-hop community should not be asking "Does this fit in?" Instead, it should be embracing releases like The Private Press as an elevation and continuation of the paradigm that Shadow talks about.

There will never be another Endtroducing..., but Shadow has added new shades to his musical palette. He no longer relies on stock tactics such as dry, aggressive snare drums and dark strings to carry many of his songs. There is more sonic variety from track to track, and Shadow has proven he can make upbeat, even danceable, records. Every detail of the release is placed to further the narrative, and the tracks flow well together in the style of a classic rock LP. DJ Shadow can't create a brand new sound with every release. With The Private Press, however, he's shown he can continue to fuse his varied influences to explore the many uncharted territories of hip-hop.

Will Monroe
Junkmedia.org Review

Masterpiece No. 2
Josh Davis aka DJ Shadow is a pastiche turntablist. His m.o. on the groundbreaking Endtroducing... was the breakbeat suite, mini-symphonies culled from pieces of thousands of slabs of vinyl. He was as meticulous as an animator hand-painting each cell. It paid off. Not only was Endtroducing... groundbreaking in the underground, it was a (relative) commercial success. In the six years since its release, no other DJ or turntablist collective has come close to Shadow's genius. Though The Private Press is a more accessible work they still - to sample that old hack MC Hammer - can't touch this. Davis loves arcana. He opens and closes The Private Press with a recorded spoken letter, over cocktail jazz, from a California family to a friend, and these homey bookends indicate Shadow's new warmth. On the first record, he was showing off (he had a right). On The Private Press, his aim is to communicate as directly and unfettered as possible. The song titles aren't grand metaphors, like Endtroducing...'s "Building Steam with a Grain of Salt", but literal: "Fixed Income", "Six Days", "Blood On the Motorway", "You Can't Go Home Again". His cribbed vocal samples express basic desires, joys, and fears which the music takes to poetic extremes. On The Private Press, DJ Shadow says more with beats, with incisive edits, than most lyricists who split open a vein and bleed on the page.

Worth the 6 year wait
I picked up "Endtroducing" back in '96, when it first came out, and it quickly became one of my favorite albums. It's been a long wait for a new album ("Preemptive Strike" being mostly older material), and I wasn't sure if it would be able to live up to Shadow's debut album. Fortunately, "Private Press" didn't let me down. It manages to both avoid sounding too much like it's predecessor (like Moby's disappointing "18"), while not venturing too far from what made "Endtroducing" one of my personal favs. One change here is that a few tracks are more traditionally song-based, some with vocals running throughout. But unlike similar attempts on "Psyence Fiction" and some Solesides/Quannum projects, these manage to retain the feel of a DJ Shadow track, while adding something new (6 Days, Mashin' on the Motorway). There's still plenty of classic Shadow epics in here too (Giving Up The Ghost, Blood on the Motorway). All in all, a very satisfying return for DJ Shadow. Hopefully it won't be 6 more years until the next album, but if that's how long it takes to make an album of this quality, I don't mind waiting.