FRIEDMYLITTLEBRAIN

Having just listened to “Changeling” again in iTunes (Don’t you just love it when you put random play on and hidden gems you forgot you had come on, “Electric Vindaloo” in this instance, followed by Changeling) – I thought it was rather fitting to write a short piece about the great man himself.

DJ Shadow pretty much changed my life. A bold statement I know, but he did. Back in ’96 when he dropped “Endtroducing” to the masses I had no idea that 13 years on I’d still be listening to it and wondering how I would have lived without it.

I based numerous university projects on it, using the same notions of layering and borrowing styles (samples) and melding them together through my illustrations and even did a series of paintings based on the “What does your soul look like?” tracks.

Simply put, Entroducing changed my musical tastes in a way that nothing else has. I used to listen to Indie/Rock and select cuts of HipHop but as soon as the first sounds of “Best Foot Forward” came out, I knew that something was happening… and it still is, it’s a constant inspiration to me, a must have for anyone’s music collection.

• DJ Shadow – Changeling (Yousendit)

From wikipedia:

Endtroducing would make the Guinness World Records book for “First Completely Sampled Album” in 2001. The only pieces of equipment Shadow used to produce the album are the AKAI MPC60 12-bit sampling drum machine, a pair of turntables and a borrowed-by-visiting Pro Tools setup from an early adopter of the technology, Dan “The Automator” Nakamura. In November 2006 Time magazine named it one of its ALL-TIME 100 albums

What do you think? Leave a comment