When you’re dealing with a musician who reportedly owns the biggest record collection in the world, there’s certainly something to be said about his knowledge in music, if not the size of his wallet. However, money is hardly the issue with what Josh Davis – more commonly known as DJ Shadow – does, because record-digging as he does it is truly an art, since few have ventured in the moldy, burnt out record store basements he has been in.
The turntable prodigy’s most recent release, Diminishing Returns, includes a BBC mix recorded live back in 2003 – something diehard fans have been aching over for years – and a previously unreleased track, “War is Hell” from 1999, all of which provide a seemingly accurate summary of Shadow’s “digging” expeditions over the years. Particularly in the midst of all the mix madness as of late, with highly acclaimed artists such as Girl Talk, it is unfair to even consider grouping Shadow under such plain standards, because the rareness of what he samples is such that it almost makes it seem as if Diminishing Returns is barely a mix at all. The first track, “Give It to Them”, for example, features the Southern hip-hop gem, Cool Breeze, with “Cre-A-Tine” (“I got people who still on parole, I got people on house arrest…”) – a song that enjoyed fairly minor popularity in its time, thus leading to its seeming nonexistence to the modern, mainstream hip-hop audience. It is this fusion of rarities and old gems, creating an illusory portrayal of Diminishing Returns as an original work rather than a mix, that grants Shadow a separate grouping from other mix artists of this age. Another point of interest is that Shadow also ventures into his typical “beatscaping” later in the aforementioned song, playing on border-line industrial elements at times, thus presenting another dimension of what makes his mixing superior to others, as it is not only his choice of samples that makes him so good, but simply how well-structured the music is.
The second-disc “Party Pak” portion of Diminishing Returns is even more obscure than the first disc, featuring a wide array of blues, jazz and psychedelic samples, closely resembling his work with Cut Chemist on Brainfreeze, minus the funk aspect. It hardly bares any relation to the first disc, except that it too almost seems like a completely unique work, further shedding light on Shadow’s immense talent as a musician.
Perhaps the only downside to Shadow’s mixing is that the lack of plainness in song choice makes it hard for the average person to enjoy it, especially since the majority of mix artists nowadays utilize relatively mainstream sampling, with straightforward song structure. In fact, other than the amalgamation of The Guess Who’s “American Woman” and Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” on “Special K”, there is hardly anything of that nature. However, who’s to say Shadow intended his work to appeal to all? He is an avid record collector after all, so it is logical that the output of that hobby into his music will create anything but a mainstream sound.
As good a mix artist as he may be, DJ Shadow’s original material still reigns supreme to anything on Diminishing Returns, as mixes are too narrow a style for him to express his creativity to its full extent. However, with this release, Shadow not only made apparent his superiority to the majority of modern mix artists (especially considering almost all of it is live material, and unrefined), but proved that there is uniqueness to be found even in mixing.
(8.5/10)
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