Brian Hickey

Setting the cliche aside, this album truly changed my life. I’d been a hip hop head since ‘84 and when I saw Shadow open for Jeru Tha Damaja in ‘96 on 6 turntables to promote Endtroducing, I was sold. I immediately recognized that he was an incredible DJ but for me it was the music, the perfect use of sampling to create an entirely new sound. To this day, Entroducing is my favourite album, full stop. Not only do I continue to catch sounds & techniques I hadn’t heard, it simply never becomes dull. Pitchfork perfectly explains the feelings it produces: “Endtroducing... is deeply spiritual. Not in the conventional sense, but in the spirituality of the soul that lives in your chest and got there from the ether and returns to the collective unconscious-- the one you feel when you feel things.” It is also the epitome of fusion as it really is a genre-less album. Incorporating elements of hip hop, lofi, downtempo, drum & bass, electro, trip hop, synth, atmospheric soundscapes, spoken word.., the list goes on and on. ALL of it created using the art of sampling. Before creating his opus, DJ Shadow frequented RARE RECORDS in Sacramento California, so much that he was granted permission to dig in the store’s enormous basement which was full of discarded albums. BFF Cut Chemist labeled Shadow as “The king of digging’ as he had an uncanny ability to bring old records back to life and make them sound deadly. It was here where Shadow found the material central to the creation of Entroducing. Listening to the album undisturbed, with good headphones is an experience unlike any other I’ve had with music. “What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt 4”, “Midnight In a Perfect World” and “Stem / Long Stem (medley)” could serve as the soundtrack to a documentary about psychedelic cult communes OR could be used in a killer set at Coachella. The album is simply that versatile, appealing and timeless. With the latter in mind, the album could easily be released today and be received as an album that has a progressive new sound. Without a weak track on the entire album, it’s easy to see why every reviewer from every major magazine or publication has given it a 10/10. Across the board, Endtroducing truly is a masterpiece as it is visceral, seminal, the kind of album that continues to give you goosebumps. Not only did it earn a Guinness record for a single album comprised entirely of samples, it’s what the maestro did with them that’s remarkable. So much that it inspired me to learn how to DJ, how to dig for records, and more so how to be fearless when producing music that sounds good to you. If you get the chance, I highly encourage you to see him play live if he comes to a venue close to where you live. I promise you’ll be happy you did.