- Jonathan
The Soul of DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow's masterpiece.
Sometimes, just when we think we've really got our finger on the pulse,
like we're listening to the Iggy Pop album that won't be out for two months
or something and think, "Boy is this cool to be listening to the new Iggy
Pop album a full two months before it will be released," we head over to
Aquarius Records, which is one of the coolest record stores in the known
universe, but which happens to be located on 24th Street in San Francisco.
Now what happens when we go into Aquarius Records, is we discover racks and
racks of CDs we know nothing about. It makes us feel very humble. And what
we usually do is ask Windy or Cathy what's good. So yesterday afternoon, we
wandered into Aquarius and there was one of the Aquarius experts fiddling
with some CDs that we'd never seen before. "Windy," we said to her. "What's
that?" Well, it turns out that there's this whole jungle thing that we only
know a vague bit about that Windy thinks is "as exciting as punk was 20
years ago." And the grooves Windy was really jumping up and down about are
the ones coming out on this UK label called Mo Wax. Before we knew what we
were doing we'd gone in serious debt purchasing "What Does Your Soul Look
Like" by DJ Shadow and Headz--A Soundtrack of Experimental Hip-Hop Jams.
Windy explained that DJ Shadow is this kid who lives up in Davis (that's
near Sacramento) who just happens to be a turntable genius who creates
monster jams. The DJ Shadow stuff is atmospheric, slow groove beat shit with
some jazzy flavors and some James Bond guitar on one track and you want to
get high and have sex for about 24 hours straight about two seconds after
you start listening to it. In fact, if Bob Dole and Tipper Gore heard this
stuff, they'd immediately try to have it made illegal, cause it really is
night music.