The Cinematic Melancholia of DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing…..’
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Hip-Hop has always been on the cutting edge as far as sampling techniques go. Producers with utmost and keen understanding have been transforming ostensibly incongruent pieces with reverence and respect into profound organic works that somehow fit together.
To some sampling is analogous to a collage of sounds, further enunciated as “taking little pieces from here, adding it to little pieces from there, as many different disparate elements as you can find, and making something totally new out of it. Literally down to, not just the drums from one record, but the snare from one record, the kick from another record, the bass line or part of a bass line from another record, putting it all together.”
As explained by DJ Shadow, the above process propagated his first album ‘Endtroducing…..’(1996), which exclusively employed vinyl records along with a Technics 1200 turntable, Akai MPC-60, and an Alesis ADAT.
An undeniable hip-hop masterpiece that summoned from all genres, from jazz to rock to psychedelia to funk to heavy metal and beyond, as he further put it, “Part of what I was trying to do on Endtroducing was really tipping the cap to all the different people that came before me that inspired me.”
‘Endtroducing…..’ has proven that sampling is more than taking other artists’ music. When experimenting the DJ Shadow's way, sampling becomes an intricate art form. Moreover, ‘Endtroducing…..’ inspired Radiohead on their 1997 album Ok Computer. The drum track to Airbag was recorded, sampled with an Akai S3000 sampler and then laboriously edited and manipulated over two days on the band’s Macintosh.
Songs like ‘Changeling’ and ‘Midnight in a Perfect World’ are sophisticated compositions where all the pieces fit so nicely together that it’s hard to believe that they came from other songs.
For example, a sample of a quiet, droning distorted guitar from Metallica’s ‘Orion’ from their 1986 album, Master of Puppets resonates loudly throughout ‘The Number Song’.
Likewise, a slight, computer-like synth buzz at the beginning of ‘Numbers’ by Kraftwerk is manipulated into a froggy vocal noise in ‘What Does Your Soul Look Like(Part 4)’.
Endtroducing By DJ Shadow available at The Revolver Club
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