My Top 10 Albums of the 90s: (4) Endtroducing..... - DJ Shadow

[This is the seventh in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

The birth of the recording industry had little initial impact on musicians' relationship with their art. Early jazzmen, for instance, thought of their recordings like business cards: reproducible and easily transportable, yet ultimately, mere precursors to the live performances that contained the true, valuable music. Over time, though, recordings came to replace live performance – with a handful of exceptions – as the music that "mattered," upon which legacies were staked. Not surprisingly, the rise of turntablism and the genesis of hip hop would take this to unprecedented levels, where recorded media itself would become as integral to the music as the recordings that media contained. The use of sampling would culminate in the Dust Brothers' production of the Beastie Boys' Paul’s Boutique, and largely die in the aftermath of Grand Upright Music vs. Warner Bros. Records, which established as precedent that all subsequent sampling would have to be cleared before use. Josh Davis was uniquely suited to launch a career in sample-based music in the aftermath of the landmark case. Having acquired thousands of records from the basement "crypt" of his local music store (where LPs up to decades old lay in unsorted stacks), the man who would become DJ Shadow grounded his musical vernacular in sounds that, in many cases, hadn't been heard in a generation. Practically, of course, this meant that the vast majority of the samples wouldn't need to be cleared. Yet it would have equally significant aesthetic ramifications – ones which would determine the musical identity of his debut album, Endtroducing....., and in many ways account for its enduring uniqueness in popular music. The album is steeped in hip hop, and relies on many of its most foundational devices: braggadocio, manic breakbeats, spoken word samples, and relentless reinterpolation of effective hooks. But the very nature of the obscure samples eerily remove the music from any context of time or genre. Indeed, more than almost any other album Endtroducing exists as an entity unto itself, expanding on its identity as it effortlessly bobs and weaves from one haunting theme to the next. Shadow's vivid talent as an arranger and turntablist certainly reinforces the thrill of listening to once-dead music being reincarnated, but it also serves to make his music gripping in its own right. The sounds that make up Endtroducing ensured that it wouldn’t ever sound of its time; the sound of Endtroducing makes it timeless.