I've Been Trying: I like this one the best. The vocals both overshadow and redeem the instrumental music.
Scale it Back (feat. Little Dragon): Same as above. Never heard of LD, but looked them up and the track sounds more like the band than Shadow.
(Not So) Sad and Lonely: Better than S & L although they are both very similar. I like the strings.
Border Crossing: Sounds like a song from one of those skateboarding video games my bro used to play.
Give me Back the Night: Would sound great in a haunted house. A guy yelling about being alone or something. Don't care to ever hear this again.
Some of the titles are a bit emo; Sad and Lonely, Warning Call, Tedium, Enemy Lines, Going Nowhere and Run for Your Life. Is Shadow conflicted?
Much of the rest wasn't memorable. Trying and Scale it Back were my faves, but nothing felt as impactful as say, Six Days or that Midnight song. Overall, more refined and updated than some of his previous works (but 5 years is a long time). And I suppose it was cohesive as an album.
i always check his new stuff out, regardless of if i was disappointed in previous efforts, because that very thing Controller7 is talking about is actually what im personally trying to achieve - getting samples to work together and then (if it feels needed) add some live playing/live vocals to it and hope that its hard to tell whats what. So its very interesting to me to see what Shadow is trying, as hes probably 10 steps ahead of me or anyone in that field. That being said, when you fusk with such things, failure is always lurking around the corner! Learning from his achievements and errors alike, i guess is my intent.
i havent listened to the npr preview yet but im expecting to really like about half of it and not like the other half at all. which would be a small step up from the outsider for me.
My hunch is that he is TOO into music, all styles, and that has resulted in him creating music that has no home base in terms of a style.
Your whole post is very on point and makes me realise why Shadows later stuff leaves me so cold. This is very true. He also seems to have great taste in old music, but shitty taste in new music. And it's the latter that informs his current output. I'll check the album to see if there's something good on it - I liked "This time" from the last one. But sonically, I'm just not moved by his melancholy instrumental stuff anymore. He's "evolved" in the same way Zappa did. I don't need 80s Zappa, I'd rather listen to Hot Rats.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Some of the fanboy outrage over this lukewarm review is hysterical, in every sense;
"Shadow again shows his mastery of redefining and presenting a range of genres into a techno colour soundscape.
Yet again the Guardian gets it wrong!"
"Your depth of understanding of this artwork is disappointing."
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
'The pulse and groove shows a rhythmic understanding that most beatsmiths can only dream of.'
:face_melt:
3 stars is very generous as well...
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
I like what I've heard, apart from Def Surrounds Us (which it now appears isn't on the album - smart move). It's just that Shadow's chosen idiom, which admittedly he did more than anyone else to define, seems less remarkable than it did fifteen years ago. Consequently, so does his music.
Also, I've read in at least two places that the song with Yukimi Nagano sounds exactly like a Little Dragon song. It clearly does not; I can't say I've heard any Little Dragon with big crashing drums and anthemic piano.
I like what I've heard, apart from Def Surrounds Us (which it now appears isn't on the album - smart move). It's just that Shadow's chosen idiom, which admittedly he did more than anyone else to define, seems less remarkable than it did fifteen years ago. Consequently, so does his music.
I'd mostly agree with this overall, but my beef is that Shadow is no longer developing the idiom that he defined--purely personal, deeply obsessive hip-hop-informed head(phone) music, true one-riot-one-ranger shit--but is instead working the idiom of his less-remarkable contemporaries, with the guest rappers "MCs" and the guest indie dudes and the guest chanteuses and whatnot. The diversity of his current sound doesn't bother me at all--I like it a lot, actually--but the loss of his single/singular voice has been detrimental.
Not fatal, though. I like the new record a lot more than I was expecting to. We'll see.
And I think that Pitchfork review is pretty off-base, but when a reviewer openly champions that fucking UNKLE record, I guess you know what you're in for.
Mjukis said:
He also seems to have great taste in old music, but shitty taste in new music.
I've been trying to wrap my head around what is missing from the album for weeks now and there are two main things:
1) musically, I have a hard time connecting with more than a small handful of songs. Even the ones I like the best, such as "Scale It Back" still sound like something that I could hear any weekend morning on KCRW. As James points out, there's no "singular voice" to it. And on the other songs, which felt more "Shadow-esque" in terms of production style (say, "Run For Your Life"), I just felt nothing for them at all. Which leads me to the second point:
2) One of the things that made "Endtroducing" notable came from how he expanded the possibilities of using samples to make music. Even writing that phrase sounds rather anachronistic but look - it was a big deal at the time and I still think, for that era, what he did there was remarkable. However, we're now about 15 years down the road and it's hard to be moved by the formalist challenge of creating an all-sample album. In a related way, it's like what happened with turntablism - at a certain point, it reached a certain creative apex but after that, the formalist innovations cease to be that compelling. Which then leaves you back with the music. See Point #1.
Comments
I've Been Trying: I like this one the best. The vocals both overshadow and redeem the instrumental music.
Scale it Back (feat. Little Dragon): Same as above. Never heard of LD, but looked them up and the track sounds more like the band than Shadow.
(Not So) Sad and Lonely: Better than S & L although they are both very similar. I like the strings.
Border Crossing: Sounds like a song from one of those skateboarding video games my bro used to play.
Give me Back the Night: Would sound great in a haunted house. A guy yelling about being alone or something. Don't care to ever hear this again.
Some of the titles are a bit emo; Sad and Lonely, Warning Call, Tedium, Enemy Lines, Going Nowhere and Run for Your Life. Is Shadow conflicted?
Much of the rest wasn't memorable. Trying and Scale it Back were my faves, but nothing felt as impactful as say, Six Days or that Midnight song. Overall, more refined and updated than some of his previous works (but 5 years is a long time). And I suppose it was cohesive as an album.
i havent listened to the npr preview yet but im expecting to really like about half of it and not like the other half at all. which would be a small step up from the outsider for me.
Your whole post is very on point and makes me realise why Shadows later stuff leaves me so cold. This is very true. He also seems to have great taste in old music, but shitty taste in new music. And it's the latter that informs his current output. I'll check the album to see if there's something good on it - I liked "This time" from the last one. But sonically, I'm just not moved by his melancholy instrumental stuff anymore. He's "evolved" in the same way Zappa did. I don't need 80s Zappa, I'd rather listen to Hot Rats.
"Shadow again shows his mastery of redefining and presenting a range of genres into a techno colour soundscape.
Yet again the Guardian gets it wrong!"
"Your depth of understanding of this artwork is disappointing."
:face_melt:
3 stars is very generous as well...
rappers"MCs" and the guest indie dudes and the guest chanteuses and whatnot. The diversity of his current sound doesn't bother me at all--I like it a lot, actually--but the loss of his single/singular voice has been detrimental.Not fatal, though. I like the new record a lot more than I was expecting to. We'll see.
And I think that Pitchfork review is pretty off-base, but when a reviewer openly champions that fucking UNKLE record, I guess you know what you're in for.
That's hip-hop, baby!
1) musically, I have a hard time connecting with more than a small handful of songs. Even the ones I like the best, such as "Scale It Back" still sound like something that I could hear any weekend morning on KCRW. As James points out, there's no "singular voice" to it. And on the other songs, which felt more "Shadow-esque" in terms of production style (say, "Run For Your Life"), I just felt nothing for them at all. Which leads me to the second point:
2) One of the things that made "Endtroducing" notable came from how he expanded the possibilities of using samples to make music. Even writing that phrase sounds rather anachronistic but look - it was a big deal at the time and I still think, for that era, what he did there was remarkable. However, we're now about 15 years down the road and it's hard to be moved by the formalist challenge of creating an all-sample album. In a related way, it's like what happened with turntablism - at a certain point, it reached a certain creative apex but after that, the formalist innovations cease to be that compelling. Which then leaves you back with the music. See Point #1.
here's my deep review:
some of it's kinda cool. 6/10.
:comedy_gold: