DJ Shadow: Lost And Found (Mo' Wax, 1994)
When I first heard DJ Shadow I had the feeling that, finally, here was the music I'd been waiting all my life for someone to actually make. A bit like hip-hop, a bit like jazz and a bit like funk, but not like any of them as it was all cut through with the same sort of obsessive melancholy I loved in Red House Painters or, y'know, Miles Davis. Shadow gave off this sense of being someone best able to express themselves through the manipulation of minute slices of sound that others had discarded years before.
Shadow seemed to me to be an entirely new type of person, musician even, if you can bear it. He was aware that here is so much recorded media, so many LPs lying in mouldering heaps across the world that it's not an entirely stupid idea to think, well, I'll make my music out of them then.
And for a while it was really, unbelievably good and the people who still, 16 years later, commission "edgy" advert music owe him, big time.
Of course, his new album ditched all the obsessiveness and just made with the "hyphy". We don't really get hyphy in Britain. But Shadow's a dad now, he hasn't got time for all this nonsense, none of us have. Whatever - thanks for all the cool stuff. Hope the kids are well.
BONUS POST
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart: Visions Of You [Andy Weatherall's Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny mix] (East West, 1991)
Of course, Shadow's shtick didn't come from nowhere. He fed Eno and Byrne through Hank Shocklee and PiL and threw his own stuff on top. From what is clearly turning into my favourite year ever, this is a classic Andy Weatherall mix of ex-PiL man Jah Wobble's Chart Smasheroo from 1991. I think that's Sinead O'Connor on this - I used to love her so much - but I sort of can't be arsed to google it. Anyway, I remember this taking the top of my head off when I was, ahem, thizz at a Leftfield party once a long, long time ago.
UPDATE
Alright, I can be bothered and hurray, it is...
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