The inspirational Endtroducing
An audio breakdown of DJ Shadow’s classic album.
One that changed my life.
Hold up, before we get started…
This album changed my listening tastes and has had a direct influence on the last 19 years of my life.
Now, that may be a bold statement but it’s an important one.
Released 2 days after my 15th birthday in 1996, this seminal album holds a lot of the love that started on the day I bought it. I remember reading various magazines and saw the cover in a few of them. I headed to the then ‘norm’, HMV and picked up a copy on CD.
Getting home, I carefully cut open the plastic seal on the album, popped the CD in the player and pressed play.
The next 63 minutes of my life were pure, uninterrupted pleasure.
I was air dropped into a land of reconstruction.
A land where the master had chopped and chopped again to create a soundscape so inspiring that the CD was on repeat as soon as the first play had finished.
The infectious rhythm of the drums…
The vocal samples…
The skits in between…
I’d finally found something that could resonate with me.
From an early age, I’d always known I wanted to be involved in arts and design, with my heart set on becoming a ‘designer’ when I grew older. There was just something about this album that made me feel like I could go on and do that — become a designer.
It was Shadow’s ability to create something new from something old that stuck with me. It was inspiring to hear something that had been crafted from a deep and special knowledge that he had.
At the time, sampling was nothing new. Breaking up records, splicing them together and mixing drum beats.
But, this was my discovery, one that was to be a huge inspiration for my life going forwards.
From then on, I dedicated so much time to collecting and listening to electronic music that I became enthralled by the entire genre, sub genres and the artwork around it. It became an obsession.
Mo’Wax, Ninja Tune, Planet Mu, Rephlex, WARP, Skam, K7!, for me to write the entire list here would take too long — you get the picture!
Fast forward 19 years and this article is an appreciation of the work that went into making this album, one that I know holds great importance for a huge amount of people, all over the world.
I hope that for those of you who love the album, have never heard it before, or for those of you who didn’t know about the many samples he used, that this article brings some new inspiration to you.
DJ Shadow, I salute you!
Thank you.
Sampling
I call it a collage. For people unfamiliar to sampling and its history and how it evolved, I think that’s the best way to explain it. It’s 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.
That’s one hurdle. But then, actually having it articulate something and channel my inspiration through it — to be able to tell a story in that way is the second hurdle. Just throwing a bunch of things together may not be very interesting.
Tracks and their samples
To illustrate the records that Shadow used to put together each track I’ve popped a Spotify player in for each track and a Who Sampled playlist for each of them.
An update for everyone!
I’ve received some feedback since DJ Shadow shared this to his fans on Facebook and decided to put together YT playlists for each of the tracks — I think I’m missing roughly 3 tracks/clips… Enjoy!
1.”Best Foot Forward”
Length: 0:48 — Who Sampled Playlist
The opening track starts the album with a flurry of vocal samples from hip hop and a slew of scratching. Shadow takes 48 seconds to briefly introduce us to the masterpiece.
2.”Building Steam with a Grain of Salt”
Length: 6:41 — Who Sampled Playlist
Becoming legitimate
…I think what Endtroducing….. did for a lot of people was kind of close the book on that discussion and say, OK, this is legitimate. This is a legitimate new way of making music.
4.”Changeling/Transmission 1”
Length: 7:51–Who Sampled Playlist
5.”What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4)”
Length: 5:08–Who Sampled Playlist
6.”Untitled”
Length: 0:24–Who Sampled Playlist
Before ‘66
Once James Brown invented funk and rock ‘n’ roll began to combine certain jazz aesthetics, then music began to take form and began to settle into a 4–4 groove, which is what hip hop is based on. … You were going for something that you could nod your head to. Anything before 1966 is going to have just a completely different approach.
7.”Stem/Long Stem/Transmission 2”
Length: 9:22–Who Sampled Playlist
8.”Mutual Slump”
Length: 4:03–Who Sampled Playlist
9.”Organ Donor”
Length: 1:57 — Who Sampled Playlist
Doffing the cap
Part of what I was trying to do on Endtroducing….. was really tip the cap to all the different people that came before me that inspired me…
10.”Why Hip-Hop Sucks in ‘96”
Length: 0:41–Who Sampled Playlist
11.”Midnight In A Perfect World”
Length: 5:02–Who Sampled Playlist
12.”Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain”
Length: 9:23–Who Sampled Playlist
Clearance
Clearing samples is not a cut-and-dried process. Some people have reasonable expectations of what they think the usage is worth and some people don’t. Some people have artistic scruples about it, some people don’t.
13.”What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 1–Blue Sky Revisit)”
Length: 7:28–Who Sampled Playlist
Some facts
– Released on November 19, 1996 on the record label Mo’ Wax.
– Produced by Shadow in the span of two years using minimal equipment, most notably the Akai MPC60 sampler.
– Reached the top twenty of the UK Albums Chart.
– Certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry.
– Number 37 on the American Billboard Top Heatseekers albums chart.
– Mo’ Wax issued four singles to promote the album.
– Time included Endtroducing….. in their list of the 100 greatest albums of all-time.
Production credits
DJ Shadow — engineering, mixing, production
Dan the Automator — additional engineering
Design
- B Plus — photography
- Barney Bankhead — photography
- Will Bankhead — photography, sleeve design
- Ben Drury — sleeve design
Footnotes
Quotes taken from NPR (http://www.npr.org/2012/11/17/165145271/dj-shadow-on-sampling-as-a-collage-of-mistakes)
