DJ Shadow became a hip name to drop in the new wave of hip-
hop with the
release, exactly a year ago, of his debut album Endtroducing ...
. (You might recall its poignant and understated sleeve: no
words alluding to title or
artist -- just a couple of dudes leafing through endless racks of
vinyl in a
music store totally dedicated to 12-inch wax.) The real hipsters,
however,
had already discovered Shadow by picking up
import copies of his releases on the trend-setting U.K. label Mo
Wax (home
also to DJ Krush, U.N.K.L.E. and a bunch of other mad scratch 'n'
mix beat
artists).
Preemptive Strike, an "interim" record beloved in the music
industry these days, gathers up those overseas releases and
throws in a
25-minute mega-mix CD as a bonus. The album allows those who
don't or
didn't frequent the import stores to get up-to-date, and provides
completists the chance to fill in what they might have missed -- not
to mention the fact it chronicles the musical progression of one of
America's more intriguing new
artists -- and the label that spawned him.
Mo Wax emerged in London in the early '90s, its downbeat
sounds like a
breath of experimental fresh air at a time when most break-beat
dance music
was relentlessly up-tempo. As such, Mo Wax music was often
described as
"trip hop," the then-nascent term a seemingly accurate description
for a
sound that owed much to the New York DJ culture that gave birth
to rap, but that was more intrigued by rhythms than rhymes, more
interested in psychedelia than in orthodoxy. Into this adventurous
musical melting pop stepped DJ Shadow (aka Josh Davis, a
northern California white kid then in his early '20s),
whose 1993 debut In/Flux immediately turned headz with
its collage of spoken word, far-eastern sounds, enormous phat
hip-hop beats (of varying
tempo), jazz basslines, strings and poetry, a journey in found
sound that
traveled through several cultures and generations over the course
of an
ambitious 12 minutes. As the opening cut on Preemptive
Strike,
"In/Flux" sounds, five years after its release, just about
contemporary
-- which only goes to show how far ahead of its time it truly was.
Shadow followed up with the four-part What Does Your Soul
Look Like EP in
early 1995, which continued where In/Flux (and its sparse
flip side
"Hindsight") left off. Melody was again restricted -- the gentle
house
piano line of "Soul Part 3" a rare exception -- and length continued
to
worry him none. "Soul Part 2" passed through four minutes of
choral vocals
and a sparse, Pink Floyd-like guitar line before the drums even
kicked in.
A full 10 minutes later, by which point an awful lot of not-very-much
had
dreamily sauntered by, that seven-note guitar refrain was still
ticking
over. Like The Orb, with whom he has a lot in common, DJ
Shadow was determined to make music that would not be rushed.
(Despite record company claims that none of Preemptive
Strike has been
available domestically, Parts 1 and 4 of What Does Your Soul
Look Like
both also appeared on Endtroducing... in near-enough
identical form as to
make no difference.)
For all these references to trip-hop and ambient, Shadow insists
that he is
a hip-hop musician, through-and-through. He might be. But his
music sounds
nothing like that which forms the basis of today's mega-platinum
rap albums.
Shadow's brand of hip-hop is a return to the original purity of the
genre, a
period when break-dancing and graffiti artistry were just as
important as
rappers, back when dee jays mixed up a variety of beats and
sounds to create
an entirely new groove rather than simply sampling a well-worn
pop hit for
easy recognition. In that sense, Shadow's music is pop art in the
tradition of Roy Lichtenstein, it's cut-up experimental collage in the
wake
of William Burroughs or Bryon Gison; like these icons of American
culture, and like all the best dee jays, what he appropriates from a
previous context he immediately redefines in a fresh one.
This is highly evident in the two final pieces on Preemptive
Strike. (The
bonus CD mega-mix by DJ Q-Bert is exactly that, a light-spirited
freebie
using some of the best components of Preemptive Strike
and scratching them all to hell.) "High Noon" takes a fuzzy guitar
line from some
long-forgotten song, places a wicked drum track underneath,
builds it up
with some synthesizer, and turns in a piece of jazzy big beat
soundtrack
music that many members of the hip new British electronica
contingent would
do well to emulate. "Organ Donor" steals a fugue-like keyboard
part to form
the basis of a similarly bumpy but entertaining voyage. With these
songs,
released as a Mo Wax single late last year, Shadow suggests that
he is
becoming steadily more interested in both the dance floor and the
radio.
That's fine by me: Shadow has already taken sparseness and
lengthy
repetition to its left-field limit, yet music so cleverly composed and
astutely arranged deserves a wider audience. Preemptive
Strike demonstrates that while in the past his appeal has been
confined mainly to hipsters who frequent import shops, his future
might yet meld with the mainstream.