There were a lot of good albums released in 1996, a year that doesn't necessarily jump out in memory as being a vintage year. I'm not sure why this thought occurred to me recently but it did. There were a good number of well above average albums in 1996: Two Lone Swordsmen's The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate) was released, a double album that redefined where Andrew Weatherall's head was at; Everything Must Go by the Manics was a big guitar album, full of post- Richey songs about renewal and escape; Beck's Odelay, a pick 'n' mix record everybody loved; New Adventures In Hi Fi, the last R.E.M. album by the original line up and their last essential lp for me; Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds; Underworld's Second Toughest In The Infants; Richard D James by Aphex Twin; Millions Now Living Never Die by Tortoise; Belle And Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister; Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup. These are all albums that I can still pull out and listen to, none seem too dated or attached to that part of the mid- 90s as to be timebound and some of them have moments that could be contemporary.
Of all the albums released that year few had the impact that DJ Shadow's Endtroducing... did, a record that broke new ground, crossed over, opened doors, and moved the music it originated from onto somewhere new. Created by Josh Davis using a single AKAI MPC60 sampler, a Technics turntable and a tape recorder, Endtroducing.... is the result of years of crate digging, of finding drum breaks, strings stabs, basslines, guitar parts, organs and horns, snatches of vocals and voices from TV and film, of plundering bargain boxes for unusual records and avoiding the obvious sources, finding samples in funk, jazz, soundtracks, psychedelia, and from Bjork, Tangerine Dream and Metallica. DJ Shadow found the records, sampled them, chopped them up, looped them, layered them and made something new. It's ostensibly a hip hop album, that's the world Shadow was coming from, but it's as much sound collage as rap. Endtroducing... was released on Mo Wax in the UK, a label which was very cool and on a roll in 1996. It took longer for his native US to catch up. From the sleeve on in, a gatefold photo of Josh scouring the racks at Rare Records in Sacramento, to the four sides of vinyl it's a fully realised and self- contained world, the kind of album that should be listened to in a single sitting, from start to finish. Here are three slices of sound from it...
What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4)
What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4) starts out like a lounge- jazz instrumental interlude that becomes a slow paced trip hop track, built around a sample of The Vision by Flying Island. Josh drops in some scratching and flute, choral voices and a sax.
Spooked out and on edge, a walk round the block in an unknown part of town after dark, Stem is constructed around a descending acoustic guitar part and contains a sample of Love Suite by Nirvana (not that Nirvana, the British 60s Nirvana). Strings and rapid fire drums eventually shatter the mood before it finishes with some screeches of violin.
Midnight In A Perfect World was released as a single in September 1996, opening with a burst of vocal, and centred on some electric piano, sampled from a David Axelrod song from 1969, The Human Abstract. There's a slow paced hip hop drum break, various bits of vocal (one from Marlena Shaw), the word 'midnight' looped over and over, a bassline from Pekka Pohjola, creating a tense and mournful atmosphere, and ending in a stuttering conclusion.