The Outrider Post

I tried to like this, I really did. I even bought one of the more expensive editions of the cd ( one of 6 different ‘limited editions,’ note to future artists: one will do, really), I ignored the worrying reviews and interviews that dropped the words ‘Hyphy’ and ‘crunk’ more times than I could count.

Dj Shadow seems to be one of those artists who seems determined to take a new direction at the most inconvient of times. It is an inherent quality of being in one of those infulential positions that bands like Radiohead and people such as Beck occupy. The real shame is that 90% of the time the self-concious new direction is often the equivalent of inviting avid fans round to dinner and watching their faces as they pretend to enjoy the shit-pie you baked them. It’s not that the product is bad in any real sense, it’s just that whenever anticipation builds up around an album like this there is going to be a lot of repressed disappointment. Inevitably new fans wont get switched on because old fans and critics are too busy raving about their own disappointment. Like I’m about to here. (On an interesting side note, I have to give a big wave to the last Blur album, which managed to alienate everyone but me it seems. Maybe that’s purely because I didn’t like them until they gave up trying to sound like the kinks and started using boxes that went wibble when you touched them).

Now, the wierd thing is that out of the whole of ‘The Outsider’, the songs that are ‘Hyphy’ (I’m using quotation marks because I’m still not convinced it’s a real genre) are actually the high points. ’3 Freaks’ has one of the best “where the hell did that chorus come from?” moments in ages, ‘Turf dancing’ seems to be some form of goth-crunk thing, even the David Banner collaboration boasts a hauntingly brilliant quality. The real disappointment comes in the tracks with live instruments, indie vocalists and a heap of rambling. They seem incoherent and quite frankly a little bland. It’s admirable that Shadow chose to not to touch his sampler for the majority of the album, choosing drum machines rather than breaks, after all it’s a little bit like Hendrix saying that actually he’d rather play piano. Excuse the tedious Shadow-Sampling, Hendrix-Guitar analogy, but it’s a rather valid point; sampling is what Shadow is known for, and yet this album boasts about as many sample-collages as your average Razorlight album. The live instruments are pleasant enough, but having heard Shadow’s brilliant collaboration with Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion for their last album I have a vague idea he could have done a lot better.

That all said, I’m pleased he’s done this. It feels a bit like clearing the deck, and also pisses all over the “Shadow-can-do-no-wrong” geek boy fans. I always felt that I liked him not so much for his brilliant songs, but because it panders to every white suburban fantasy about being crushingly relevant in a genre that is almost exclusively African-American. “Yes, he’s better than Dr Dre and he’s white!” is the cry from internet chatrooms, all too often forgetting that Dr Dre wins by the sheer fact that people have heard of him, as do Kayne West, Pharrell Williams and most other hip-hop producers. DJ Shadow is so un-hip-hop to the average listener that when David Banner says ‘DJ Shadow in this mother-fucker’ on ‘Seein Thangs’ it sounds more than a little peculiar. Yes, Shadow is good at hip-hop (as early Quannuam and Solesides releases will testify), yes he’d consider himself hip-hop, but unfortunately people seem very adept at lumping him in with Portishead, Morcheeba and countless other “ambient-intelligent-coffee-shop-post-god-why-does-it-feel-so
-empty?-trip-hop” examples. Even this album seems to try to recover some of that after it’s brace of hyphy songs, providing a Thom Yorke sound-alike and some guitars to lull the leaving fans. Shame really that they couldn’t have just got the real Thom Yorke and made a collaboration album, rather than this tagged on excuse for a second movement.

Anyway, buy the album-feel a little confused, wonder if he’s lost the plot. Then post about on the internet. Watch the girls come flooding to you.