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Released in 1996 - more than 20 years ago - this is one album that has stood the test of time and you'll recognise some of the music because it regularly gets used in films, TV series and advertising. I don't think that I will ever get tired of it - I've been listening to it for 20 years and it's always part of any collection I bring with me. It's my go-to music for listening snowboarding (at low volume so I can also hear what's going on around me). No question, this is an amazing album if you're into music to chill to.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Quality CD
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Great item. Many thanks
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Great album, great price, speedy delivery
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Ask the NoCal turntable nerds, the trip-hoppers, the frat boys, the hippies or the ravers stoned on the beach at sunrise: Endtroducing... is deeply spiritual. Not in the conventional sense, but in the spirituality of the soul that lives in your chest and got there from the ether and returns to the collective unconscious-- the one you feel when you feel things. That's the spirit that saves us from being fleeting and disposable: If I necked with that one girl that one sunset, with Endtroducing on the car stereo, then no matter who else did the same thing, I'm me and that moment's still mine. Dig? Endtroducing taps that inner-whatever better than most of the albums of its day, and it swims so easily that it established an entire genre of instrumental hip-hop-- count how many records come out every month and are dubbed "Shadowesque." Building the album from samples of lost funk classics and bad horror soundtracks, Shadow crossed the real with the ethereal, laying heavy, sure-handed beats under drifting, staticky textures, friendly ghost voices, and chords whose sustain evokes the vast hereafter. Even the "look at me" cuts like "The Number Song" didn't break the mood; the album was so perfect and the technique, so awesome that it's still definitive today, and Shadow has yet to top it. (Never mind that if Four Tet could swing a record as proficient as The Private Press, we would throw him a parade.) For this Deluxe Edition, Endtroducing hasn't been enhanced or remastered, but it now comes with a bonus disc of remixes and singles, including Cut Chemist's fantastic "party mix" of "The Number Song" and Gift of Gab's rhymes on "Midnight in a Perfect World", as well as alternate versions that give a useful perspective on the album. For example, "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt" and "Mutual Slump" omit the overdubbed speech, and without it, the samples seem naked and duller-- which highlights one of the album's subtler strengths. But Shadow can't avoid the irony that this is a revival of an album that revives other albums. We could be hearing this music, not for the second time around, but for the third and maybe the fourth. The buzz of these dug-up sounds infuses the texture of the album; focusing on it reminds me of the few times that I've heard an album by a deceased performer and actually realized he had passed-- like the time I listened to Kind of Blue the night that Miles Davis joined three of its personnel in the grave, and felt their absence, even while their solos hadn't lost a shred of vitality. Shadow clearly gets that. In the documentary Scratch, Shadow takes us to the record store where he found most of the vinyl used on Endtroducing. Upstairs we see the regular shelves and bins, but downstairs, in the basement, are tens of thousands of old albums stacked or dumped all over the room, barely lit by a few light bulbs and littered with dust and dead bats. Shadow patronized the store for five years before they let him in this crypt, and as he says in the documentary, "Just being in here is a humbling experience for me, because you're looking through all these records and it's sort of like a big pile of broken dreams...Whether you want to admit it or not, 10 years down the line you'll be in here. So keep that in mind when you start thinking like, 'I'm invincible and I'm the world's best,' or whatever. Because that's what all these cats thought." We usually dismiss reissues of CDs as the ultimate cash-in-- the most cynical way forRead full review
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