When this album came out, it was hailed by almost everyone as a very good record. But for my mind it wasn't given anywhere near enough credit. The album featured that year in many of the top 10s, but other records that many people would probably struggle to remember now where above it on the lists. NME said the Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go was a better listen, which is extraordinary (and more than a little bit embarrassing) in retrospect. They also had Supergrass' Fuzzy Logic ahead of it - which is just laughable.
But other, apparently wiser sorts were just as guilty of looking a gifthorse in the mouth. Wire magazine had it at 27 that year, behind Photek's lacklustre Hidden Camera, Lamb's wine bar drum n bass debut, Squarepusher's patchy Feed Me Weird Things, Plug's decent but hit and miss Drum N Bass For Papa, and the debut from postrock noodlers Tortoise (not to mention the inevitable placings for Einstürzende Neubauten and Derek Bailey).
I think now it is perhaps clearer that Entroducing was a monolith of 90s music. It still sounds far, far ahead of its time, and it's one of the four or five best albums I've ever heard.
When I started looking into the samples that made up the album, I thought at first I would realise how little of it was actually Shadow's work. But I think the opposite is in fact the case.
A look at any of the tracks on that splendid record shows us both the diversity of sounds he reaches for, and the masterly and unexpected treatment he gives them. The pitching of a stray piano riff from a David Axelrod tune in Midnight In A Perfect World is a case in point. Shadow is the perfect miner of forgotten musics. Most of the material he used to compile Entroducing is either neglected, obscure or downright naff. But he weaved it into something endlessly fascinating. The tragedy for music is that he never got close to doing anything like it again. But perhaps that just makes Entroducing all the more special.
These are five of the principal records used in Midnight In A Perfect World. Just click the youtube link when it comes up to view the first one.
No comments:
Post a Comment