Solid Little Rock Jams

DJ Shadow- Endtroducing

So apparently I've now become the Dance/techno/electronic+instrumental reviewer on this little bit of musical Plymouth Rock we call Solid Little Rock Jams. Since musical snobs who are into RAP and other forms of electronic music probably already know of this seminal (Hahahah, consisting of semen, hahahahahahaha!) record, this review is probably more oriented towards FANS OF ROCK AND POP who don't understand the beauty of electronic beat oriented music. In case you don't know, DJ Shadow is this GUY who did a lot of collaborations and shit, especially some with fucking black people and the anti-black person Thom Yorke. Bearing the mark of Radiohead's frontman and seratonin-lacking singer, this album to ME, is one of the most biggest advances in progressive ELECTRO-SYNTHESIZED MUSIC of all time. Get bored listening to Underworld, Squarepusher and Orb? Get this album! He also did stuff with the MO' WAX label and if you're really curious just go to allmusic.com, seriously, what the fuck are you doing here!!! Oh wait, he did shit with Thom Yorke after Endtroducing, well, what I MEAN TO WRITE THEN is that you can easily tell, WITH THIS ALBUM, why the two would want to fucking work together! When I was working at Best Buy, some dude told me to purchase it, but instead of listening to him I put some Rush and Led Zeppelin on and rocked out. Oh, how foolish I was, because seriously, this album is amazing. Much more "progressive" then anything out there today, I would rank this along with OK COMPUTER as one of music's most influential albums of the NINETIES. If you tied nine ties together length-wise you'd also get the length of my goddamn dick!

So what does this album soundlike? Well, I could be like Pitchforkmedia (Incorporated) and shit a thesaurus onto your face but you'd still have no good idea of what to expect. The album begines with some VOICE (I have to be very careful using that word because apparently any instrument could be a voice, and not necessarily the vocal performer of a piece! I don't want to mix anyone up!) samples spinning and being manipulated and then Building Steam with a Grain of Salt comes in and you're treated to a pitter patter rainy minor piano OSTINATO that gets driven around by a sweet little ominous chorus thing, which then gets beaten around by a bunch of electronic drums and shit! The Number Song is an intense bass and drum driven NUMBER, culminating in a bunch of cool samples that sounds like a free-style psychedelic jam with samples bouncing back and forth against one another. What Does Your Soul Look Like has a bass line fatter then Orson goddamn Welles that slowly moves and caresses you, before leaving you for a sexy young, film noir. The texture on Midnight in a Perfect World is eerie, sounding like a slowed down Idioteque complete with sullen female vocals over an amazing drum and bass lament and that has a light keyboard motive dancing around it. Everything that's exciting about good texture music, be it experimental jazz or electronic music or rap samples is bandied around on this album, as DJ Shadow seamlessly combines lush (Like your fucking mom!) urban soundscapes over patterings of keyboards, guitars, samples and some synthesized instruments. I'd like to think of this as a more focused, less dancey Thievery Corporation album, with each song having a solid group of ideas that DJ Shadow manipulates and exploits to their full effect. This is a pretty technical review, as you can tell!

Anyways, get this fucking album, today, if you have to! Unlike marijuana, EXCELLENT MUSICAL ALBUMS are often a gateway to harder, more addictive music. One of these days I'll go back to writing joke reviews about famous albums that everyone has already heard of, but I can't rest until I know that everyone has heard of this beauty!

Rating: Giving an album a rating is like labeling a person or making some sort of stereotype, which is a completely stupid approach to music, even if it gives you the abiliy to compare and contrasts albums to one another and determine which of an artist's albums are the best. Therefore the rating for this album is a naked Lindsey Lohan.

Download: DJ Shadow- Stemlong Stem