Endtroducing.....

A load of samples expertly put together to bore you to death on a Wednesday morning. 2/5

Questions of ownership. Whose property is that drum beat, this organ, that voice? Of authorship. If I use your art for my art, do I become its creator? If not, does that tune belong to the guitar maker or the composer? Of permanence. If placing that snippet next to this one, or looping it, or giving it a beat, changes its original meaning, does art ever have a final form? A man in a room filled with vinyl, exploring every groove in minute detail, sinking deeper into his musical fever dream, the answers always a fingertip away, if he'd just.....

It's sort of the epitome of what this list is all about. I would argue that it's absolutely one of the albums everyone should listen to at least once before shuffling off to the great beyond. That isn't to say you'll like it. I'm not even sure if I liked it or would bother listening again. I do know there's no album like this, and was happy to hear it. Something like a hip hop DJ trying to update jazz.

This is a beautiful album it needs to be felt, and feel it I do.

Elevator music + noise

No idea about anything about this. Let's dive in. Best Foot Forward - Classic 90s rap intro. Not really music. Building Steam with a Grain of Salt - Lovely little piano line leads into a great hook. Quotes from a guy who MIGHT be JK Simmons? This track evolves into something that sounds a lot like Blockhead The Number Song - This reminds me of a Guitar Hero spinoff game called DJ Hero. Shadow has a great knack for mixing other people's melodies, drum beats, and samples. You could draw a direct line from DJ Shadow in the mid-90s to Girl Talk in the mid-2000s. Peppy with a lot of hard kicking drums. Changeling - A rainy, dreary, ethereal piece. Eventually a melody comes in that can only be described as Cyperpunk Weather Channel. What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4) - Jazzy AF with a nasty little bass riff. Untitled - I have to imagine that this is the stinger at the end of Side 1 on the LP (and the cassette). Just a goofy little 20 second thing. Stem/Long Stem - A long medley of melodies Mutual Slump - This one didn't make a huge impression on me Organ Donor - I think this hook was LITERALLY used by Blockhead! Why Hip Hop Sucks in '96 - Frankly, I don't think it does! Midnight in a Perfect World - This one also failed to make much of an impression on me. Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain - Chill vibes What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 1 – Blue Sky Revisit) - Maybe the best track on the album? Overall this is excellent. You can hear the artists that influenced Shadow, as well as the artists he influenced. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent!

Still do not see what people see in this album. I can appreciate the samples, but not the resulting sound, I guess.

Some of the tracks are nice and chill, others are annoying af. Not my cup of tea.

Painful.

No

What a waste of time! Not my music genre at all. Did not like a single track of that album

Absolute classic of hip-hop. I have so many nostalgic memories tied to this album. The sampling game here is just unparalleled.

Already knew it well. Classic. Bit depressing to be reminded it came out 25 years ago though!

Great! Chill, and good to work to

A classic. Great

This album defined so much of my late teenage years, it was epic back then and it's still epic now. I give this 4 blazed years of PlayStation in your mates garage and a long walk home in the rain with your cans on.

Wow! Wasn't expecting to love this so much.

I know it is only samples and not songs, but it was amazing :D

Fantastic album, very awesome discovery

Conhecia já. Amo. Perfeito. Sampling at its best. Um dos meus álbuns preferidos, queria morar dentro dele. Músicas preferidas: Changeling, Stem/Long Stem, e principalmente Midnight in a Perfect World

Absolutely loved some of it. Some of it made me feel completely uneasy.

Background music. Not much else to say about this one, it faded into the background and I could not identify any individual songs. Wasn't bad music but definitely not something that stood out to me. I know DJ Shadow is one of the original producers who brought this music to the forefront but it will never be more than working background music for me.

I'll tell you want I did like...the use of an organ on a song titled "organ donor"

Not my cup of tea.

Couldn't listen to it all.

hello

Godamn. This album is pretty damn immaculate. Nothing that really blew me out of the water per se, but the mixing is incredible. I feel like I'm saying this every review but instrumental hip-hop is new to me. The samples of interviews are also a nice touch. Just great.

Really enjoying this album. Definitely one to come back to while riding my bike, chilling in the tub, or to have echoing through the house. Cool find!

Didn't like the beginning but by the middle it was getting interesting

I love plunderphonics but its just drawn out too much

Boring. Sampling is just such an uninteresting act. I don’t care for it.

Definitely not for me.

Horrible

dont really like it

Shadows masterpiece. Still such an amazing soundscape of trip hop and down tempo hip hop. Too good.

Amazing album, absolute top of the feeling/atmospheric records of all time. For a long time I was only listening to Midnight In the Perfect World, and the song is great for sure, but in comparison to the rest of the album it doesn't really stand out. Every track is like a short, slightly melancholic story that creates an overarching theme, and MITPW is just one of those stories. Easily one of the top records on this list, in my opinion, and probably one of my favourite trip hop album, maybe even better than Massive Attack. Absolutely great stuff.

Piękny eksperyment, piękny chaos. Z jednej strony słyszę, jak prostymi środkami ten album został stworzony, z drugiej strony to wciąż jest kawał świetnej muzyki stworzonej przez jednego człowieka gdzieś w garażu. Współczesna oda do muzyki, bez rozróżniania na gatunki. Mam wrażenie, że na tej płycie wykorzystał wszystko - klasykę, jazz, synthy, funk, drum machine, hip-hop, wywiady, wycinki z filmów, co tylko chcecie. I gość sprawia, że to się łączy w jedną, spójną całość. "Stem" to absolutna perełka dla mnie. Słuchając tego mam wrażenie, jakbym dosłownie słuchał esencji wczesnych lat 90-tych. Ta płyta jest przede wszystkim intrygująca, zachęca do odkrywania i poszukiwań, a jednocześnie pozwala się w niej totalnie pogubić i po prostu porwać zmiennemu nurtowi. Jakbym miał czas na kolejne hobby, to po przesłuchaniu tego albumu kupiłbym sampler. Wahałem się długo między 4 a 5, ale chyba w ramach uznania za samo to, ile pracy i pasji musiało zająć samo zbieranie tych dźwięków pójdę w pięć.

surprisingly great all the way through

I got this album when I was 15 or so. I've loved it ever since. Moody, atmospheric, with beats that sounded like nothing else ever at the time. It introduced me to the concept of crate digging for which I am so grateful. Dig out the extended mix of Organ Donor if you can. The 90 seconds you get on here almost feels cruel - like here is the best song ever but you can only play for a moment. I forgive it, because Building Steam, The Number Song, Midnight and What Does Your Soul Look Like also deliver at that level, and I suppose he had to make it all fit on wax somehow (hint, drop Why Hip Hop Sucks in 96 - while it remains true in any year, the joke wastes 40 seconds!) Before Timbaland and Dilla, there was this, and damn it was good - a real shame his tracks are almost too distinct to be rhymed over (though RTJ do a great job).

Still love this album. The beats, the bass, the samples, the soul. Especially noticed the sample from Bjork's Possibly Maybe on Mutual Slump, which made me very happy.

A hypnotizing cinematic sound and a masterpiece of reinvention by way of ingenious layering. Amazing dynamics along the way on this head-bobbing ride. I could stay inside this postmodern collage all night.

I'm very happy this album popped up, as it is already one of my favorite albums of all-time. It may be popular/over-rated in music circles on the internet, but I don't care about that. It's such an interesting, beautiful album with immense atmosphere. It captivates me like no other record has before, and that's just with samples and drums. Definitely has high replay value and is very memorable.

One of my favorite albums ever. For me, this is where electronic music began.

Elemental

I should like Endtroducing more than I do. It ticks pretty much every single box that I look for in music. But there has always been something about it that I find a bit … cold. It’s good, but it has never engendered any affection in me. But everyone else seems to think it’s amazing. I can appreciate the dusty crate driven craftsmanship.

2/1001. Beautiful record, had already listened to it a few times before. Took a while to click (listens with proper headphones, for starters). Its highs are sensational (Steam, Stem, Midnight). Only knocks I can see is that otherwise its repetition can get a bit stale, and I value lyricism a lot so its absence limits the upside of becoming a phenomenal album to me. Either way this album sits firmly in 8/10 territory and I could see it ascending just by virtue of more exposure to its deeper cuts and associating it with other life events.

Definitely not beating the lo-fi chill weed vibe allegations here. This whole album just feels easy to unwind to or have on in the back during a quiet/lazy day of work. I can see where someone could find this monotonous but this whole thing just flows together so easily. if I had to pick a specific part that stood out to me as a favourite it would be Midnight in a Perfect World

When this came out I avoided it for lost ideological reasons that would’ve been fed by the era’s wash of tepid trip-hop. Big beats, soft beats, dead beats, sugar beats, ubiquitous in every other stoner’s college latte lounge, utterly vile. A couple of years on, Simon and I attended an UNKLE set for free, and had a lovely conversation, only mentioning the music when I asked if the gig had started and was told Lavelle sans Shadow had been playing for half an hour. Thank goodness we had seats and each other’s sparkling company, otherwise blood would’ve been glugged by the goblet. 26 years later, I like this! Thoughtful splashes of big drums Pollock’d with drama and intent, the best tracks reminiscent of Morricone and Carpenter soundtracks. I also belong to the same vintage cycle club as the The Herbaliser. What was the prime of your youth like?

I am a fan of hip-hop and respect the context of this record and DJ Shadow's meticulous sampling. Many of the songs just aren't clicking for me, especially Organ Donor. Overall, I'd give this a 3.5, just barely rounded down to a 3 on this scale.

I initially came across DJ Shadow on various compilations, especially cover CDs from British music monthlies like Mojo, and some remixes. And I read about this album long before I ever heard it. This is the ur-text for instrumental hip hop, re-inventing the album patchworked out of samples. Less frenetic than its forebears (Three Ft High and Rising, Paul's Boutique, Nation of Millions, etc), it showed that trawling through the crates could yield atmospheric and open soundtracks. It established the blueprint for Dilla and the Avalanches. Moody, cinematic, and with a distinct trip-hop vibe, the material, is ultimately, a bit forgettable. But a pretty chill vibe. I do love the cover. I've spent many an hour digging crates in stores just like that. It felt like I had been seen.

Shrug

more noise than music

Yet another I was puzzled by when it came out. It's built entirely from samples - great, but why? Dull as ditchwater, highlight is Organ Donor but when you're relying on Bach for a tune you're pretty low on ideas. Could be entirely AI-generated these days. Rubbish

Somewhat catchy during certain parts, but not super memorable as a whole. It is hard for me to judge a DJ's work as it is typically relies on the work of others through samples. In this instance, I noticed a bit of Metallica's 'Orion' on one of these tracks so I am sure that there is a ton here that was not originally created by DJ Shadow. While he did use this piece in a unique way, it is hard for me to tell how good this really is outside of my personal enjoyment of it (which was average). I understand that it takes real talent and patience to create mixes on the level he is doing here; however, I am overall not as impressed as I probably should be by this work. If it had more that stood out or more of a cohesive album structure, I would probably like this more, but it just ended up coming across as what I would consider mediocre DJ work (even though this is probably considered one of the best given its placement on this list). There is nothing here that would make me want to come back to it. 2/5.

Listened to this on a road trip, album pretty much finished, and I barely realised it was on. Not adding nor deducting points for working with Zack De La Rocha later down the track.

DJ music. Pass.

Too experimental for my taste

I don't get this album, pretty sure that I listened to it before a couple of times but it doesn't inspire anything in me at all. Maybe it's an album of it's time but not for me.

Not a fan

Really sick beats, and great sampling.

A really fun listen, was not expecting it

Fascinating sound. So interesting and dynamic and beautiful. also just really nice chill vibes.

This album is an interesting easy listen. It's great for paying attention to and for letting it ride in the background while you focus on other things. Great vibes for getting shit done.

Made entirely from samples from obscure old albums. Incredible.

Just pure vibes throughout. I was expecting this to be closer to Dilla, but this was surprisingly beautiful.

Entroducing is one of those albums which I used to love, but subsequently disappeared out of consciousness when the ex-wife insisted we make space and go digital as opposed to keeping my separate system which had served me well for many years. No visual cues, no DJ Shadow. So excited to see this pop up, and man has it aged well. It’s still as engaging as it was upon release. Genre defining and experimental in its sampling. Probably not one an album I will return to as often as I once did, as I don’t have enough “chill sessions” to do that these days. Still a great album. 5 stars all the way!

Probably like a 3.5 musically but the vibes are incredible and I used to listen to this in college so we're rounding way up.

Absolutely iconic. As a teenager, this album is what showed me turntablism was more than just scratching.

Master sampler, show me the ways. How to do low-fi beats before it was a thing.

I bloody love it

One of the key albums of the 1990s. Redefining the music making process and opening up the imigination of thousands of dj/producer/sampling musicians that would deconstruct and rebuild pop on Akai's MPC, turntables and other tools enabling not-formally trained creativity to find new ways to come up with sound designs/tracks/sets in the following decades. Hardly anyone (incl. Shadow) could follow up the feat of condensing this into a cohesive album like "Endtroducing..." though.

10

probably the core album for me . mateen kinda forced me to buy a used copy of this at dr disc when i was like 14 and im glad he did! it really changed about what i thought music could look like and also introduced me to a lot of older rap music which I still really love... dont tell mateen tho...

Rlly liked it Loved all of the instrumentation

5/5 Certified hood classic

outstanding stuff. 5

Excellent.

Really unique album and I just love a hip hop drum beat

!!!

A landmark, a monument. The ultimate lp of its kind. The only thing that comes close is Donuts. The ability to tell a compelling story using only samples and beats is remarkable.

Top 10 albums of all time. A fuckin' masterpiece.

Simply immaculate electronic. Solid 5 Stars.

That’s an easy 5. This is a little more in the Fatboy Slim / Prodigy type of instrumental drum & bass album genre than it is a “hip hop instrumentals” album (ala MF DOOM’s Special Herbs), but I’m totally fine with that – this exceeded any and all expectations I had for it. It’s a breezy 60 minutes of some incredibly varied beats & soundscapes that feels innovative beyond its years, in a way that feels more attuned to the mid-2000s than 1996. I really don’t have THAT much to say about it – a lot of my praise would come down to “really cool percussion” or “neat synth work” or “great sampling throughout” or “this sounds like this video game I really like”. It’s really just an audio journey that’s meant to be experienced with headphones in, ears attentive, eyes occasionally closed to bop your head to, and your hands available to hit some sick air drums. If I have any knocks, it’s that some of the shorter, intermission-y tracks feel out of place (not the alien transmission ones, but stuff like “Untitled” & “Why Hip-Hop Sucks In '96”) & a few songs enter some repetitive states,but those are incredibly minor knocks – I really, really enjoyed this. It’s a wonderful listen, a great album experience, and a very welcome surprise for my ears; an album like this is the reason I’ve stuck with this for 412 albums so far, and it’s a very easy 5.

Reading some of the reviews I think some people really miss the point of this exercise. It is not a list of all your favourite albums, it's there to challenge you and get you to try to listen to things that you would otherwise never have listened to. When you approach it this way, it truly makes sense, it's a percentage of what I have listened to I would never have tried and my life is better for it. Hot Buttered Soul was a revelation, plus some of the rap I wouldn't have listened to either. So please embrace the true spirit of the app😁 This album is "cool" love the laid back beats. On the issue of ownership of samples the artists are paid and also how many chord combinations are now original? You have to be at the front edge of creativity to come up with original music eg Radiohead etc which most people are not to create totally new music Great experience 5*

Mutual Slump might be the highlight for me?

понравилось. процесс создания думаю был чем-то средним между музыкой, поиском и каталогизированием)

Classic!

Groundbreaking and trailblazing when it came out, Still influencing to this very day!

Another album that I was fortunate enough to buy on release and have listened to more times than I can count. It's another ground-breaking album. There really wasn't anything like this at the time it came out. It spawned thousands of replicas which all fell short of this masterpiece.

This is one of my earliest Techno/ DJ Albums that I listened to as a kid and I love this album start to finish is a complete masterpiece! I love the laid back grooves that DJ Shadow showed us on this album before he really blew up, this is the album to introduce people to DJ Shadow

Classic

Веселая нарезка сэмплов 9/10

Easy 5. So good. Good for intense listening. Good for chilling. Good for working. Good anytime. Classic. Great cover art.

Perfect chill out album

It’s about mood. Mood and range. A melancholic journey through beat making with a truly eclectic sample base. The vocal samples help create an atmosphere of mystery. A complete new beat oriented world filled with chopped up drum breaks, funk guitars, organs and the wish to go roller skate. It’s no coincidence the album ends with a sample from twin peaks - this is the otherworldly red room of 90’s hip hop (RIP David Lynch who just passed). My favourite tracks were always ”building steam with a grain of salt” ”stem/long stem” and ”midnight in a perfect world” but lately it might be ”mutual slump” and the druggy slow break beat of napalm brain turning into the hectic jungle beats of scatter brain. Not to forget the closing track what does your soul look like part 1 - especially the scratching on the outro of the track. But every song is its own little world connected to the greater universe that is this album. My favourite album of all time. Although I like most of shadows output he never has come close to the magic of Endtroducing…

The type of album that you can love in any situation, whether you’re stone cold sober writing a PhD thesis on thermodynamics, or you’re so violently high that you become convinced that you will be the first person to OD on weed, even though you only took half a gummy. There’s a level craftsmanship displayed on Endtroducing… that makes you forget that every element of this record is sampled. Sure, the turntable work is obvious, but the way some of the drums and instruments blend together, it sounds so seamless. Endtroducing… is like a magic trick, but unlike a magic trick, it never stops being impressive. Thankfully, it’s also so buttery smooth, so silk, that you don’t need to be paying attention 100% to get it. It’s also the birthplace of the ✨vibey✨ hip-hop album; the entire Lo-Fi Beats to Chill & Study To™️aesthetic is basically the grand-child of Endtroducing… It’s truly sad that DJ Shadow is a One Album Wonder™️, and for all his talents, never could meet this level of beauty again. But that’s also what makes this album so special, so singular, so unique. It’s Hip-Hop in a hyper-traditionalist sense, before sampling became fodder for lawsuits, and it’s a love letter to digging culture without overthinking what it means to love to dig through a stack of warped, water-damaged records in a basement. DJ Shadow was never going to match this; the entire genre of hip-hop was never going to match this. It’s pure in mind, body, and spirit, and while that doesn’t mean it’s the best hip-hop has to offer, it’s the Platonic Ideal of Hip-Hop as a genre, and a timeless classic that can still blow your mind and also chill you out.

I enjoy this album far more than the me before I ever heard it would expect me to. Can't even explain why, it's just eminently listenable.

a masterclass in sampling……my dad has loved dj shadow for his experimental take on his medium, somewhere between trip hop and ambient. listening on headphones rly highlighted the weirdness this time.

This is pretty awesome. Great samples, impeccable vibes, an exploration of the potential of an entire genre of music. Favorite track: "Midnight in a Perfect World."

always dug this album