Home Read Classic Album Review: DJ Shadow | The Private Press

Classic Album Review: DJ Shadow | The Private Press

The maverick San Francisco DJ's second set picks up where Endtroducing … left off.

This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):

 


With his groundbreaking 1996 debut album Endtroducing …, San Francisco’s DJ Shadow raised the trip-hop and electronica bars with his fusion of deft turntablism, inventive sampling and solid musicianship. But whaddaya do for an encore?

Well, if you’re the artist formally known as Josh Davis, you lay low for nearly six years — then do it all over again. The Private Press, his impatiently awaited sophomore solo album, picks up right where Endtroducing … left off. Merging lazily funky hip-hop and acid-jazz backbeats, oddball spoken-word samples — including Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy gravely intoning “pure energy” — and wigged-out turntable trickery, Shadow painstakingly fashions psychedelic, cinematic soundscapes whose moods may range from soothing to scathing, but whose effects are seldom less than scintillating. Call it Re-Endtroducing …

 

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