Year: 1996
Producers: DJ Shadow
Endtroducing… is DJ Shadow’s debut album released in 1996. It is unique for being the first album created entirely from samples and has a Guiness World Record to honour this accomplishment. The album is mostly instrumental and pioneered the Trip-hop genre.
Each track has a unique composition, yet they all fit in with the album’s overall theme. They’ve all been created with careful detail that takes repeated listens to fully grasp. Even without using any words of his own, DJ Shadow has managed to communicate messages through the album’s surreal world; made by picking out bits and pieces from his own 60,000+ records. The tracks have a coherent progression which is rare for instrumentals. Building Steam With a Grain of Salt gives us some insight into DJ Shadow’s thought process with samples that outline the theme of “assimilating and distributing.” It was also recently featured in the videogame Splinter Cell: Conviction. What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4) is among the most beautiful tracks I have heard in my life. A deep, satisfying bass is the song’s backbone on which a soothing hi-hat pattern rides. It becomes unsettling without warning when samples kick in that sound like scared people and robots. Why Hip Hop Sucks in 96 is a very clever “skit” that uses a 30 second funky solo to answer its own question (It’s the money). The following track Midnight in a Perfect World is another surreal and uplifting track. It even has a music video showing how the various samples work together.
The album is mind-blowing even on a purely musical level, but the fact that the whole album was made on an Akai MPC60 still proceeds to make my head explode hard enough to send bits into space.
Listen:
Track List:
1. “Best Foot Forward”
2. “Building Steam with a Grain of Salt”
3. “The Number Song”
4. “Changeling” / “Transmission 1”
5. “What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4)”
6. Untitled
7. “Stem/Long Stem” / “Transmission 2”
8. “Mutual Slump”
9. “Organ Donor”
10. “Why Hip Hop Sucks in ’96”
11. “Midnight in a Perfect World”
12. “Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain”
13. “What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 1 – Blue Sky Revisit)” / “Transmission 3”
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