album #94

endtroducing (dj shadow)

This is the music that I wanted Portishead to be… mysterious, fuzzy, hip, dark, ambient cool. Even the artist's name, DJ Shadow, fits with the theme of the music… the whole thing is an elusive, melodic, haze of hip-hop collage. These are also some of the best named songs I've listened to- "Building Steam with a Grain Of" carries an industrial intensity with a pretty melody; "Stem, Long Stem" is a long, narrow, slow song; "Mutual Slump" has got a hint of darkness, aggression, defeat in it; "Changeling" has a glowing touch of sci-fi mystique; and one of the tracks that I especially liked, "Midnight in a Perfect World," is sexy, spacy, hollow, ambient… a night of mystery and luxury, in slow motion. I wrote that description before I even noticed the title, that's how perfectly the title matches the mood.

Ultimately this is a cool album; if I'm in a coffee shop at midnight and I hear this music playing, I know that I'm living in a cool moment. But I think I may have overheard this album a little bit… the novelty and strangeness wore off for me a little, and I'm not sure I love this type of music enough to draw deeper into the meaning or the sound of it.

I tend to think of a lot of cultural experiences (reading certain books, hearing certain albums) as a 3-step process of discovery… from a distance, at the start, it seems pretty cool… then you're in it, and it's difficult and exhausting, the novelty worn off but the work still ahead of you… but after enough study and mastering, there's a renewed richness, understanding of the experience, and you love it even more than you did initially. My feeling is that I loved this record through the first stage, but now I'm in the second stage- where it sounds good, it's cool, but I'm not in love with it- and I don't think I have the discipline or the inclination to listen/examine my way towards the third stage. It's a good, cool listen, I like it, and I'd like to hear more of DJ Shadow, but I don't think I'll fully fall in love with this one.