Scale It Back

Finally!! DJ Shadow seems to be back in his skin, with The Less You Know is Better, his latest release. My initial reaction was that it sounds like someone put their arms around him and shook him the crunk out of him and now he is back to his old self. The only travesty is that it took so long to get there...several albums have passed since The Private Press, the last album I bought. Less You know picks up where the Private Press left off, as it is reminscent of that sound and also of his collaboration with James LaVelle with UNKLE. Pitchfork panned this album, giving it only a 4.5, but then again, I am assuming that the average age of the reviewer is about 23-25 and they wouldn't have been really into the emergence of Shadow back in 1996. In 2011, every new band has to be hip, cool, a throwback to what young 20-something can understand. For all of us who are in our thirties and beyond, this might be the album for you!

In case anyone needs a refresher, DJ Shadow, nee Josh Davis, was a key figure in developing the experimental instrumental hip-hop style associated with the London-based Mo' Wax label. His early singles for the label, including "In/Flux" and "Lost and Found (S.F.L.)," were all-over-the-map mini-masterpieces combining elements of funk, rock, hip-hop, ambient, jazz, soul, and used-bin finds. There was nothing really like in the early 1990's. When his sound began to mature, Mo Wax released the 40 minute opus, "What Does Your Soul Look Like" in 1995, a heady concept for a hip hop instrumental, yet topping the British Charts!

Davis grew up in Hayward, California, a suburb of San Francisco. He had already been fiddling around with making beats and breaks on a four-track while he was in high school, but it was his move to the Northern California town of Davis to attend university that led to the establishment of his own Solesides label as an outlet for his original tracks. There he hooked up with b-boys and Blackalicious and Lyrics Born, and through college radio his mixtapes were heard and began spreading around the hip-hop underground. Shadow's first full-length, Endtroducing..., was released in late 1996 to immense critical acclaim in Britain and America. Preemptive Strike, a compilation of early singles, followed in early 1998.

Fast Forward to 2011, Shadow is back on his turntables, scrounging up countless bits and pieces of vinyl history. The Less You Know...is his first studio album in five years and sounds closer to his humble beginnings than the past couple albums. This is quite a contrast from the previous album, which was heavily rap based. Instead, Shadow focuses on plumbing the depths of his record collection, occasionally flashing and scratching like in his salad days, but just as often pulling slabs of forgotten wax -- metal riffs, piano balladry, bygone acid-rock burnouts, crystalline female folkies -- to state his case for him.

One such vocal, "Scale it Back" features the sultry voice of Little Dragon's Yumiki Nagano. Take a listen here.



Buy your copy of The Less You Know here.