DJ Shadow – Our Pathetic Age (November 15, 2019)

[thumbass]

2 hours ago, Richie Sombrero said:

Is it pure shit?

It's not very good 

[President Squidward]

Endtroducing I loved and Pre-Emptive Strike I was meh on (maybe the latter needs a relisten. I was tired that night), but I'm curious to see how this record is lmao

[goDel]

That clip is pretty classy. Almost too good for the track. And the track itself...it's not bad, but if I'm honest, if I didn't know it was DJ Shadow, I would have thought it was a new Chemical Brothers track. The Brothers going mellow, that is. Not bad, though.

[Bertolt Brechtakt]

Hm, The Mountain Must Fall was actually quite good after several crap albums. But this now is just usual as business since Private Press.

[Limo]

I found that video amusing.

Not the music, though. That was very bland.

[Kennylogg Bubblebath]

The instrumental suite is meh. The rap half of the album is a bit more listenable, but still nothing spesh. I'd like to say I'll be revisiting this album again, but I dunno if I'll ever be arsed. 

IMO the strongest Shadow release of the decade is The Less You Know The Better. There are quite a few tracks on that I still listen to.

[thumbass]

It's a bit bland but a step up from the last album

[zero]

sigh...I don't know...I hate to rag on him, but IMO this is just another nail in the coffin for someone who was once a great artist. each time he releases something new, there's that hope in the back of my mind that maybe it won't be *that* bad...that future DJ Shadow would be all worked out of his system and it would be back to good ol' dusty records Josh again...but nope...this double album is yet again another big misfire. from dated sounding samples (chipmunk vocals?) to uninspired trap beats, arpeggiated synth noodling to lack of melodies, makes you wonder if he'll ever be "back." I do think some of the beats on the rap part are a little bit better than the instrumental part, but I'm really not into modern rap so not super excited by this.

 

On 9/21/2019 at 12:08 AM, nikisoko said:

dude needs to ditch ableton and get his mpc back out pronto

truer words have never been spoken. if only he'd heed this advice. seriously, I'd love him to go back and do an entire sample based album using an mpc. I know he said something to this extent before - that he doesn't want to keep making Endtroducing over and over again...but c'mon man...compare "Our Pathetic Age" to "What Does Your Soul Look Like"...it's apples to oranges.

but yeah, I know, people change and he's not the same guy with the same ideas he had back in his early 20s. whatever creative wave he was riding back in the '90s probably won't ever be back, and it'll be more future Shadow from here on out...

[mcbpete]

Was gonna make a new thread about this but it's definitely relevant here - Have music laws changed since the late 90s? So much electronic music (and hippedy hop) back then was so sample heavy that many album was filled with 'ooh I know that sound - where was that from?' moments. But now, nothing - It's pretty much all 'composed' rather than sampled.

So yeah, do you think this is an aesthetic choice - or did something legal happen in the 00s that effectively killed sampling for commercial releases ?

[zero]

^ that's a good point. you definitely don't hear as much sampling as back in the '90s, and that could be a major factor in why Shadow's style has changed so drastically. I don't know about legal changes, but my guess would be that thanks to internet it's become a lot easier for artists whose work was sampled to become aware that they've been sampled...and to try and get some $ out of it. which totally sucks if you're DJ Shadow, because his main instrument is the mpc. the guy's an amazing collage artist, but not really that great a painter...

he mentions something to this extent in this interview from years ago:

https://www.npr.org/2012/11/17/165145271/dj-shadow-on-sampling-as-a-collage-of-mistakes

Quote

Have you ever been approached by any of the artists that you've sampled? Has anyone thanked you for shining a light on their obscure or even ignored records?

Yeah, it has happened a couple of times. There's a guy named Jules Blattner who I sampled on the U.N.K.L.E album that I produced. He's a St. Louis stalwart who made music in the '50s, '60s, '70s. He has a very healthy attitude toward it. You can kind of go two ways. You can look at it as tip of the cap and a way to reintroduce that person's music to people in a completely different context than the way they originally intended. I find that a lot of the more down-to-earth working musicians really get that.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have sometimes people that have gotten to a place where they're very protective of their legacy, and they can't really see the positive benefit. ... Sometimes you have to just work with those people. There's been times when we've encountered resistance and broken through that resistance. And then there's times where we're not able to make it happen. And the unfortunate thing about that is, not only does my music not get out there, but nobody will ever have a chance, through my music, to rediscover the original artist.

 

[mcbpete]

49 minutes ago, zero said:

the guy's an amazing collage artist, but not really that great a painter...

Totally on the same page a you there  What was great about the 'sampling generation' of electronic music (not a real term, just made that up!) was that the samples themselves would usually be recordings of artists who themselves had years of musical training. Collating all those recordings therefore in making a track would result in a piece with incredible layers of musical adeptness (is that a word?!)

Gary Cobain from FSOL in a Mixmag interview (October '96):

Quote

Gary meanwhile is railing about the Orb, about how they got fantastically boring when Alex Patterson started thinking he was a musician, not a sample king. "You ain't no muso, you're a theif. You're a fucking pickpocket, and a good one."

He is, of course, talking about himself.

Has whosampled.com killed a genre (or two)?

[sidewinder]

No doubt licensing rights has had a big impact on several music genres including hip-hop and industrial. I think I've read some stuff from the likes of Beastie Boys and Skinny Puppy talking about it over a decade ago. 

[Squee]

It sure hasn't stopped Flying Lotus from sampling everything that comes his way.

[xxx]

I still have a CD-R with "hip-hop sources" scrawled on it that features Bobby Caldwell, Labi Siffre, Bohannon, Isley Brothers, Stylistics and tons more. I wound up really liking the discographies of the artists that were sampled so I see Shadow's argument.

To be fair though...they all got Napster'd/slsk'd/etc because so much was out of print or difficult to find. Hard to know if the "exposure argument" would translate to real cash unless they toured. So many of them are too old or dead. I'm techno till I die but there is absolutely nothing like cleverly blended live instrumental and vocal stems in the vein of Endtroducing.

[donquixote]

I didn't mind the single they've been playing on radio BBC 6. Don't get me wrong id never be like "oooh I'm really in the mood for that shadow track, gonna go down Woolies buy a copy and put it on repeat" or even put it on Spotify for that matter. However as radio fodder there's worse. 

[Richie Sombrero]

18 hours ago, donquixote said:

I didn't mind the single they've been playing on radio BBC 6. Don't get me wrong id never be like "oooh I'm really in the mood for that shadow track, gonna go down Woolies buy a copy and put it on repeat" or even put it on Spotify for that matter. However as radio fodder there's worse. 

Depressing prose. 

[President Squidward]

I’m reviewing this album right now, and Juggernaut is killing me... what the FUCK am I listening to 

[goDel]

Is that a positive? 

[President Squidward]

5 hours ago, goDel said:

Is that a positive? 

Nope haha. Such a disjointed track. 

... I will say everything else is like a solid 6 out of ten outside of a few great hip hop tracks in the second half. Underwhelming but not bad. Endtroducing I still prefer.  

[silentvision]

Released On: 01 Jan 2020

Available for 27 days

DJ Shadow presents three hours of brilliant records for tender heads on NYD. The legendary producer soundtracks a mix of music that will ease you through a potentially painful day. Featuring music from This Mortal Coil, War, The Paris Sisters and Thrupence.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000cm8b