Hip Hop Hump Days #8: DJ Shadow – Endtroducing (1996)

A common criticism levelled at DJs is that they’re essentially just playing music someone else has made.

Big deal. Some people choose to express themselves creatively via a set of turntables instead of picking up a guitar. No one’s pretending to be Jimmy Page here.

DJ Shadow has taken this concept one step further by using someone else’s music to make music of his own. And by that, I don’t mean he’s just lifted a familiar old vocal sample and stuck it over a drum machine and then tried to pass it off as his own.

Nope. He’s dug deep in the dusty crates of record shops, thrift stores and garage sales to find the elements that make up almost the entirety of ‘Endtroducing’. Drums, pianos, strings, guitars, basslines, snatches of dialogue… they’ve all been painstakingly extracted from these forgotten slabs of vinyl and then looped, manipulated or generally reconstructed to create something completely different.

The result is one of the most ground-breaking, cinematic-sounding examples of instrumental hip hop you will ever encounter. ‘Endtroducing’ is a record that many have tried to emulate (even Shadow himself has struggled to match it) but no one has yet come close to capturing its widescreen atmosphere and creative genius.

Opening with ‘Best Foot Forward’, a 48-second sound collage of hip hop samples, the album takes a decidedly eerie turn almost from the word go with second track (and arguable highlight) ‘Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt’ conjuring up images of being chased through an endless, rapidly darkening forest by an unseen force, soundtracked by an emotive piano loop, slightly sinister female choir and interview snippets.

Shadow’s penchant for cutting up and then painstakingly rebuilding beats is evident throughout, particularly on ‘Stem/Long Stem’, where industrial machine-gun drums tear mercilessly through gentle strings and harp, and ‘The Number Song’, in which percussion becomes the lead instrument. On ‘Napalm Brain-Scatter Brain’, drums slowed down to a dreamlike pace evolve into sprawling jungle-style rhythms which, in turn, give way to mellow strings and delicately plucked guitar: the calm AFTER the storm, if you will.

As complex as this may sound on paper, Shadow’s method appears to be taking a relatively simple idea and then gradually adding layers of colour and texture as the track progresses. For example, ‘Organ Donor’ (for the definitive version of this track, check out the ‘Pre-Emptive Strike’ compilation) revolves around a hypnotic two-finger organ riff punctuated by a subtle, vibrating bassline and an unashamedly funky drummer. ‘Midnight In A Perfect World’ is based around a synth loop sampled from Pekka Pohjola’s ‘The Madness Subsides’, seasoned with haunting hints of piano from David Axelrod’s ‘The Human Abstract’ and multi-layered drums, while seemingly disembodied female vocals fade in and out across the airwaves.

The album is broken up with little interludes which, while considerably shorter than the full tracks, are no less atmospheric. ‘Transmission 1’, ‘Transmission 2’ and ‘Transmission 3’ are particularly disturbing, sounding like distress signals from hell transmitted through a detuned radio (in fact, they sample dialogue and effects from the film ‘Prince of Darkness’). ‘Transmission 3’, which rounds off the album, also borrows the familiar and equally unsettling “It is happening again” line spoken by the giant in Twin Peaks during one of Agent Cooper’s visions. There are warmer moments too, such as ‘Why Hip Hop Sucks In ‘96’, a G-funk workout lasting less than a minute which ends with a knowing voice exclaiming “it’s the money” (see what he did there?), and an untitled track in which an unidentified man talks about a girl having eyes “as big as Jolly Ranchers” over a laidback blues-funk background.

‘Endtroducing’ demonstrated that a hip hop record didn’t need to rely on vocals – it was about the attitude, the ideas and the method (2006’s bitterly disappointing ‘The Outsider’ was widely criticised for focusing too heavily on guest vocalists and relegating the music to second place).

However, while forward-thinking in its approach and realisation, ‘Endtroducing’ also serves as something of a history lesson, going full circle to recapture hip hop’s formative years in the early to mid-70s, when DJs such as Kool Herc would play just the percussion elements of records, missing out the vocals, to create something new – even going as far as to buy two copies of a record so that he could stretch out those breaks. As Herc stood behind the turntables at those parties in the Bronx 40 years ago, he couldn’t possibly have envisaged that his sonic experiments would go on to inspire a global movement which, in turn, would give birth to one of the most important albums of the 90s.

‘Endtroducing’ continues this proud legacy. Those dusty junk shop records are the orchestra and DJ Shadow is composer and conductor combined. Encore.

From the archives: Hip Hop Hump Days #4: Dr Octagon – Dr Octagonecologyst (1996)

Originally published on It Is Happening Again on April 16, 2014

“Hello, this is the offices of Dr Octagon. If you have insurance or medical problems, I’m here for you for any type of intestine surgery, rectal rebuilding, relocated saliva glands… and chimpanzee acne. And, of course, moose bumps. You can call 1-800PP51 Doodoo. I’m in your corner.”

And there we have it: the tone is well and truly set for an album which, while not exactly breaking any sales records, is still held up as one of the finest examples of what can be achieved when hip hop is allowed to have a little imagination.

So, who is Dr Octagon? On record, he’s an extra-terrestrial, time-travelling gynaecologist and surgeon who takes something of a sledgehammer approach (literally) to his patients. As a doctor, he is either highly incompetent (“Oh fuck! Patient just died in room 105… nurse/Fuck it, he’s dead/Oh shit, there’s a horse in the hospital”) or downright homicidal (“You need a bad operation… gimme the scissors, hammer, flame/Okay, I’m getting ready to stab… jam it in”).

It’s become a bit of cliché to talk about an album sounding like nothing else released at the time, but in the case of ‘Dr Octagonecologyst’ (see what they did there?) it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. It also pains me to describe it as a concept album, but how else would you describe a record which documents the exploits of a murderous doctor from outer space?

The voice of Dr Octagon is, of course, the reliably eccentric Kool Keith, formerly of Ultramagnetic MCs and the supposed inventor of the ‘horrorcore’ sub-genre of hip hop. The abstract, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, non-sequiturs and vivid horror and sci-fi imagery throughout ensure that Keith truly shines as a rapper who is unafraid to let his imagination run away with him. Sure, the humour can be a little juvenile in places (“What would you do if I hit your face with dog doodoo?”) but it all adds to the surreal, dream/nightmare-like charm of the record.

Although technically Kool Keith’s first solo album, it would be unfair to overlook the contribution made by Dan The Automator, who provides the cinematic, psychedelic and often unsettling soundtrack, and Q-Bert, whose scratching demonstrates why he won so many successive world titles for his turntable skills. It’s to their credit that an instrumental version of the album was released later that same year and still managed to sound like a complete record, even without Kool Keith’s vocals.

‘Dr Octagonecologyst’ didn’t reach anywhere near the sales of, say, 'The Chronic', but then who says Dr Octagon set out to make friends in the first place? This isn’t about following the rules. This is about doing something completely different JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN. Hip hop is all about expression and if you can’t express yourself then you may as well just give up.

The doctor will see you now.