DJ Shadow - Our Pathetic Age (2019)

With this album coming 3 years after his previous effort it meant those 3 years were the shortest gap DJ Shadow had between albums.

This album was also the longest album DJ Shadow had with it being a double album. Quite a strange choice given we're in an era people are more likely to listen to single tracks rather than albums. Also as I listened to the album on the internet it was more like one long album than a double one.

There is however a clear distinction between the 2 discs. The first one is all instrumental and the seconds features guest rappers.

This concept does make sense, DJ Shadow made his name doing instrumental hip hop but at the same time having rappers with a producer who can clearly produce behind them is surely a good thing.

Generally speaking I prefer my instrumentals to vocal tracks so it's quite ironic that I didn't really get into the album until the vocal tracks kicked in. 

The instrumental part isn't bad but nothing really stands out on it. This is the first time I've ever heard the album and it could grow on me, but it sounds like it's all been done before except not as good as it was done in the past.

We have some decent rappers on there such as Nas and De La Soul and I feel they are complimented by the production of DJ Shadow. I finally find myself enjoying the music and thinking this is how rap should be. It's just unfortunate you have to wait so long to get to it.

 

DJ Shadow - The Mountain Will Fall (2016)

DJ Shadow and his fans appear to have a different view on things. DJ Shadow thinks his best music is yet to come and his fans think he'll never make anything as good as his debut album "Entroducing".

I went to see DJ Shadow in concert in 2016 when this album came out and I listened to the album around that time. Despite that I couldn't really remember a thing about the album prior to listening to it again.

I don't think it's a bad album as such but it's no "Entroducing". It really needs a few listens to get into and as I recall I did get into it after a few listens at the time. However I don't think I've listened to it since 2016 and I'm really having to start from scratch again and am yet to have the few listens it needs.

What I will say is that I enjoyed the concert at the time and would recommend going to see him play out. 

 

Last 10 Years

Yesterdays post about Fenech-Soler brought back memories of other music I was listening to when I first discovered them. Basically I didn't think I was old enough to reach the 'better in the old days' stage of my life and made an effort to keep my music tastes current.

One thing I did was pick my 25 favourite albums. It was a very biased list favouring the more recent albums though, 17 of them were from the 21st century and the other 8 were from the 90s. It also included an album which had only just come out at the time.

Nowadays I'm at a point where I'm not even up to date with a lot of artists I've liked in years gone by. Some went to to make some truly dreadful music and others I just forgot about. I do sometimes seek out new music from an artist if I'm going to see them in concert, but many don't really bother making new music anymore and stick to the classics.

It got me thinking, what albums have the 25 artists of those albums I picked released in the last 10 years. Well here's the answer:

2 Many DJs - No albums

Norman Jay - 2 albums: Skank & Boogie (2015), Mister Good Times (2017)

Portishead - No albums

Massive Attack - No albums

High Contrast - 2 albums: Night Gallery (2017), Notes from the Underground (2020)

Plump DJs - No albums

Jacques Lu Cont - No albums

Erol Alkan - 1 album: Fabriclive 77 (2014)

Spiritcatcher - No albums

Various Artists - N/A

DJ Shadow - 2 albums: The Mountain Will Fall (2016), Our Pathetic Age (2019)

Tiga - 1 album: No Fantasy Required  (2016)

Air - No albums

Fatboy Slim - No albums

Sander Kleinenberg - No albums

Snoop Dogg - 6 albums: Bush (2015), Coolaid (2016), Neva Left (2017), Bible of Love (2018), I Wanna Thank Me (2019), From tha Streets 2 tha Suites (2021), BODR (2022)

Jurassic 5 - No albums

Kruder & Dorfmeister - 1 album: Johnson (2022)

Zero 7 - No albums

Mylo - No albums

Digitalism - 2 albums: Mirage (2016), JPEG (2019)

Underworld - 2 albums: Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future (2016), Drift Series 1 (2019)

LCD Soundsystem - 1 album: American Dream (2017)

London Elektricity - 2 albums: Are We There Yet? (2015), Building Better Worlds (2019)

Propellerheads - No albums

Just 11 of the artists have released an album in the last 10 years and only 3 of them have released one in the decade so far. Only Snoop Dogg has been prolific with none of the others managing more than 2 albums in a decade.

This leads to another question, are these albums any good?

Just one way to find out. I'm going to give each of those albums a listen and post what I think of them here.

My 25 Favourite Albums: DJ Shadow - Entroducing.....

At the time this album came out in 1996 I was only listening to dance music. People started talking about DJ Shadow and assumed him to be dance music as that was what many DJs were doing at the time.

Then one day somebody played me this album, and to be honest I didn't like it at first. As I was predominantly into Happy Hardcore at the time, this was simply too slow for me.

Once I became more open minded when it comes to music though, I recalled the time I heard this album and thought maybe it was something I could like, so I revisited it and realised just how good and album it is.

In the beginning I had assumed DJ Shadow to be one of the acts from Bristol, I didn't realise he was American. One thing I did notice though is that the Bristol acts such as Massive Attack had their albums in the dance section in the record shop, whereas DJ Shadow would be in the Rap/Hip Hop section.

On paper it's an instrumental Hip Hop album, and if you had to classify it as something then this would be it. It really breaks down the barriers though, it's experimenting with various samples to produce something you've never heard before.

My 25 Favourite Albums: The Ultimate Lessons

In the world of dance music, generally speaking the DJ is the one who usually gets the acknowledgement. Certainly back in the 90s, you wouldn't even know who the MC was half the time.

In Hip Hop though, the opposite is true. Maybe in the early day's you'd have the likes of Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa taking the plaudits, but the reality is the rapper is the one most people go to a Hip Hop concert to see, few people, if any, go because they want to see the DJ playing for the rapper.

This album though well and truly puts the Hip Hop DJ in the spotlight.

It was released in 2002, but the beginnings of the album date back to 1983. DJs Double Dee & Steinski put together 3 "lessons", which were basically hip hop sample based collages which were named "Lesson 1", "Lesson 2" and "Lesson 3".

Being entirely sample based though they were never commercially released due to sample clearances, until this album got released and they are the first 3 tracks.

Fast forward to the 90s, 2 Hip Hop DJs decided to have a go at creating their own "lesson". They were DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist. Both are called "Lesson 4" and are tracks 4 and 5 on the album.

As such, there is no "Lesson 5" and next up is "Lesson 6" which is by Cut Chemist and also appears on the self titled debut album from Cut Chemists group, Jurassic 5.

The final 3 tracks are live performances based on the "lessons" which are "Live Lesson A" by Cut Chemist and Shortkut, "Live Lesson B" by DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist and Steinski, and "Live Lesson C" by DJ Shadow.

Hip Hop to many is all about lyrics, and that's fine. We all have our reasons for liking music and lyrics are one of the reasons I like Hip Hop. However, for me there's more to it than the lyrics, or indeed the rapping style.

Basically, the backing track is just as important, if not more important. If the backing track is crap, then any MC, no matter how good they are, is going to struggle to do anything decent.

More to the point though, Hip Hop does not always need a rapper in the same way dance music doesn't need, and often doesn't have an MC. To appreciate what the DJs do in Hip Hop music, this album is a great way to show them in all their glory.

DJ Shadow @ Electric

On Wednesday night I went to Electric in Brixton for the first time to see DJ Shadow not for the first time.

Its now 20 years since his debut "Entroducing" was released, but the focus tonight was on his latest album "The Mountain Will Fall".

He arrived on stage and described his latest effort as being a fresh approach. As usual he had the visuals on in the background, the problem was the venue wasn't really suited to them as they weren't high enough to see properly.

Another issue with the venue was it was far too hot, it was like walking into an oven on arrival before most of the crowd got there. Fortunately because DJ Shadows music is generally quite slow you don't have to move quite as much when dancing to it. You could even tell DJ Shadow himself was feeling the heat on the stage by himself.

When playing tracks from "Entroducing" the crowd would get lifted like you would expect. For me though the highlight was when he played "Nobody Speak" from his latest album following a bit of a political rant he made prior to it. He then followed up with some material from Entroducing.

Overall a good performance, not too keen on the venue though.