The Record Crate by Alex V. Cook – Shadows and smoke

The world may have finally caught up with DJ Shadow. The influential DJ and artists permeated the content bubble and established the turntable as an instrument with Entroducing in 1996. Sampling wasn’t new by any stretch, but Shadow was one of the practitioners that helped silence the quibbles about the practice of making one’s music out of pieces of others.’ Regardless of where you sit on this debate, sampling is workaday now, and because of that, Shadow’s latest The Less You Know, The Better sounds less innovative than it does part of the ether. Compared to hyperkinetic juxtaposers like Girl Talk or the shaggy irreverence in mashups, Shadow’s well-heeled DJ sessions come off as a little safe, perhaps even dated. It’s hard to keep that cutting edge sharp. Read more…