One of the best moments in Doug Pray's turntablist documentary Scratch features DJ Shadow sitting in a dank basement surrounded by piles of musty and dusty vinyl. The Bay Area DJ looks into the camera and muses, "Just being in here is a humbling experience to me, because you're looking through all these records and it's like a big pile of broken dreams." Leave it to Shadow to find pathos where most vinyl fiends would see only treasure.

One of hip-hop's moodiest b-boys, DJ Shadow (a/k/a Josh Davis) rejiggered hip-hop's flight pattern with his 1996 debut, Entroducing . . . DJ Shadow (Mo' Wax), a disc that flipped the genre's boundless energy inward. As a youngster on the outskirts of the Bay Area, Shadow grew up worshipping the crackling cut 'n' paste hip-hop tracks of pioneering producers like Mantronix and Double Dee & Steinski. A decade later, he was reworking those same techniques into a string of stunning Solesides and Mo' Wax singles that turned U2 drummer Larry Mullen's martial "Sunday Bloody Sunday" groove into a beathead anthem and slow-pitched hip-hop loops into a somnambulant blue funk. Soon after, Entroducing turned instrumental hip-hop into an international phenomenon, inspiring entire genres (trip-hop, downtempo) and a nation of crate diggers.

Working from a hip-hop blueprint, Entroducing took the music out of the club and into the armchair. Unconstrained by the demands of the marketplace, this white Northern California b-boy followed his own Muse (sonic experimentation, serious introspection), taking hip-hop to places his heroes couldn't. Reaching beyond the '70s jazz-funk samples that inspired past producers, Shadow dug deep into his crates, expertly arranging the samples into epic cuts that moved in cinematic slow motion, as if swimming through a dense cloud of weed smoke.

Although his tracks lacked vocals, there was no missing his expressive depth. The walloping drums, shifting textures, and disembodied voices sounded like hip-hop's own existential crisis -- it was music made for late-night rap sessions and soul-baring ruminations. Even his titles -- "What Does Your Soul Look Like," "In-flux," "Midnight in a Perfect World" -- hinted at the chin stroking within.

Six years later -- a long time in pop music, an æon in hip-hop -- DJ Shadow has returned. The Private Press (MCA) is his first full album of original material since Entroducing. But though his methodical recording style is legendary, he hasn't spent the entire six years holed up in the studio. Indeed, after Entroducing, he teamed up with Mo' Wax honcho James Lavelle for the UNKLE project, a star-studded collaboration featuring cameos by Thom Yorke, Mike D, and Richard Ashcroft that nonetheless never lived up to its promise. The critical backlash and industry drama brought on by UNKLE's 1998 album, Psyence Fiction (Mo' Wax), only seemed to confirm Shadow's fear of mainstream popularity and rock-star hobnobbing. So he stepped back from the edge of fame and returned to the underground hip-hop scene, teaming up with his original Solesides/Quannum crew (Blackalicious, Latyrx, Lateef) for two compilations, collaborating with Dan "The Automator" Nakamura and Prince Paul, and joining forces with fellow California crate digger Cut Chemist on 1999's Brainfreeze and 2000's Product Placement, lighthearted CD mixes constructed exclusively with rare funk 45s.

But while Shadow was back getting in touch with his collecting/b-boy roots, the rest of the world latched onto his sound and concept. The collector as artist and the sampler as instrument -- both ideas burst onto the charts while Shadow was on hiatus, through artists like Moby, Fatboy Slim, and the Chemical Brothers. Plus, countless chillout/blunted/trip-hop/acid-jazz compilations turned Shadow's headphone hip-hop into music for sipping cocktails and browsing boutiques. What was once original -- dusty funk loops, atmospheric effects, crypto-mystical vocal samples -- quickly became a cliché.

These developments can't have been far from Shadow's mind when he retreated to his Marin County hideaway to record The Private Press. And not just because he's been dismissive of the "downtempo/trip-hop" genre tag, or because he disses Moby's "media-driven" attitude in the new issue of Spin. It's also that The Private Press seems more a reaction to Entroducing (or a reaction to what that album inspired) than a continuation of it.

Shadow hasn't deserted the after-hours sound that made his reputation, but The Private Press gives the impression of someone trying to escape a legacy. More varied than its predecessor, the disc traces a wide sonic and emotional path, with both the funniest and the dourest work of Shadow's career. Tossing played-out "jazzy" flourishes out the window, he mashes up clattering funk breaks, gothic flourishes, and cryptic found sounds into 57 minutes of terse, dense electronic music. There are divergences into actual songs (Shadow doesn't sing, alas) and flirtations with new wave and electro, plus one very schlocky, ill-advised gospel/inspirational/ambient number. But even though his batting average falls steeply, The Private Press is never less than absorbing: Shadow's arrangements are so poised, his drums grooves so satisfying, that even his missteps are worth exploring.

Inasmuch as his art is a combination of vinyl hoarding and sampling, it's not surprising that the title of the new album is derived from -- yes -- record collecting. "Private press" is an allusion to records that were produced in miniature recording booths in arcades or fairgrounds in the '30s and '40s, where visitors could record an audio message and have it pressed onto wax. Private press is Shadow's new passion -- he bookends the album with two of these grainy, ethereal recordings. And if the past is any proof, they'll become a crate-digging obsession within a few weeks.

After that intimate moment, The Private Press kicks off with some prime Shadow: "Fixed Income" ties together a pastoral guitar figure, a distant moog fart, and a loping drum loop into a yearning mood piece that sounds like John McLaughlin jamming over an autobahning krautrock groove. The tempo picks up with "Walkie Talkie," a blazing, drums-of-death jam that re-establishes Shadow's mastery of the cut 'n' paste hip-hop jam. Editing together one drum break after another with a few old-school exhortations ("I'm a bad motherfuckin' DJ!") for emphasis, he makes the beat get down and tighten up all at once. But just as the groove gets cooking, he cuts it off. There's no easy fulfillment here; it's almost as if he were trying to make it hard on himself.

On the next track, "Giving Up the Ghost," Shadow finally digs in. Guitar figures circle overhead. A cello cries in the background. Vibrant drums jump into your headspace. And the layers build into a celestial wedding cake -- stacks of pillowy samples frosted with dense rhythms. Then on "Six Days," he starts taking some chances. It's an actual song, with Shadow laying an entire androgynous British psych-rock vocal over a shuffling hand-drum-and-brushes groove. The lyrics are typical peacenik anti-war stuff (the song it mainly samples is called "Six Days War"), the mood is equal parts wistful and angsty, and the effect is, in an ironic twist, very Moby.

Although most listeners will be spinning this album in their CD players, Shadow is a diehard vinyl purist. Thus, a robot voice introduces the "b-side": "Welcome to fear, side two." And here The Private Press gets tricky. "Mongrel . . . Meets His Maker" is a two-part suite that's blooming with ominous foreboding, and Shadow forgoes his vaunted tension-to-release-to-catharsis structure. "Monosylabik" is his most unconventional track ever; using a single two-bar loop, he blurs and blends, fries and frazzles a simple dub groove into countless rhythm fractals, treading the territory of British techno-experimentalists Autechre and Aphex Twin. It's a stunning display of programming virtuosity, but more impressive than moving. Likewise, "Right Thing/GDMFSOB" and "You Can't Go Home Again" are uncharacteristic forays into electro and new wave that never fulfill their potential, despite some stunning passages. In fact, the second half's sole home run is "Mashin' on the Motorway," a funny riff on road rage with Quannum rapper Lateef playing the enraged driver over a throttling surf-rock beat. But that success is countered by its ponderous successor, "Blood on the Motorway," nine minutes of elegiac piano and maudlin singing that'll leave you with one question: is that Steve Perry or Daryl Hall on the hook?

Neither as impressive nor as cohesive as Entroducing, The Private Press finds DJ Shadow making something that previously seemed unimaginable -- mistakes. But the international beat-digger cabal is bound to cut the guy some slack. Even as career-minded artists focus on maintaining market share, Shadow continues to experiment. And if that leads to a few dead-end detours from time to time, it's well worth the tradeoff.

Issue Date: June 14 - 20, 2002