DJ Shadow Endtroducing released

Endtroducing… DJ Shadow

Released: September 16, 1996 Peak: -- US, 17 UK Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.1 UK Genre: trip-hop (electronica/hip-hop)

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Best Foot Forward Building Steam with a Grain of Salt The Number Song Changeling/Transmission #1 What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 4 (untitled) Stem/ Long Stem/ Transmission #2 (10/96, 74 UK) Mutual Slump Organ Donor Why Hip Hop Sucks in ‘96 Midnight in a Perfect World (9/96, 54 UK) Napalm Brain/ Scatter Brain What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 1: Blue Sky Revisit/ Transmission #3 Total Running Time: 63:23

Rating: 3.985 out of 5.00 (average of 20 ratings) Quotable: “Rendered all other ‘trip-hop’ entirely irrelevant.” – Blender Magazine Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: In 1994, Josh “DJ Shadow” Davis, “a hip-hop DJ with a scholar’s sense of purpose” BL “locked himself in his basement with a sampler, a sequencer and one of the world’s strangest” TL and “gargantuan” BL “record collections. Two years later, he emerged with a completely original electronic symphony.” TL “Davis’ debut drew on horror-film ambience and pounding prog-rock, but was anchored by old-school production.” BL “As a suburban Californian kid, DJ Shadow tended to treat hip-hop as a musical innovation, not as an explicit social protest, which goes a long way toward explaining why his debut album Endtroducing... sounded like nothing else at the time of its release. Using hip-hop, not only its rhythms but its cut-and-paste techniques, as a foundation, Shadow created a deep, endlessly intriguing world on Endtroducing, one where there are no musical genres, only shifting sonic textures and styles.” STE His effort effectively “rendered all other ‘trip-hop’ entirely irrelevant.” BL Endtroducing “builds on a solid historical foundation, giving it a rich, multi-faceted sound.” STE “Shadow created the entire album from samples, almost all pulled from obscure, forgotten vinyl, and the effect is that of a hazy, half-familiar dream – parts of the record sound familiar, yet it's clear that it only suggests music you’ve heard before, and that the multi-layered samples and genres create something new.” STE “The 13 tracks vary in length and tone – some are beat driven and under a minute while others have orchestral swells and stretch to almost ten – but all are constructed entirely from samples, and the only voices are from obscure spoken word and comedy albums that sound like they’re being beamed from outer space.” TL “Somehow a narrative emerges, and on Building Steam with a Grain of Salt, we even get autobiography by proxy. ‘I’d like to just continue to be able to express myself,’ says a self-taught drummer through the fuzz and pop of vinyl scratches, ‘as best as I can.’” TL “It’s not only a major breakthrough for hip-hop and electronica, but for pop music.” STE

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for DJ Shadow BL Blender magazine (10/2008). “100 Greatest American Albums” STE Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide TL Time magazine (11/13/2006). “All-TIME 100 Albums” by Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light First posted 3/23/2010; last updated 11/16/2023.