DJ Shadow - The Mountain Will Fall, review: ‘packed with mischievous ideas’

DJ Shadow fuses original songwriting and samples on his intriguing new album
Genre-busting: Josh Davis is something of a child in a sweetshop on his first album in five years
John Aizlewood28 June 2016

Back in 1996, the former Josh Davis changed the musical landscape with Endtroducing….., a wholly sampled album which flowed into a seamless, song-based whole.

DJ Shadow - The Mighty Will Fall

Since his masterpiece, Davis has struggled, but five years after the patchy The Less You Know The Better, he’s finally struck gold again with The Mountain Will Fall, which fuses original songwriting and samples to take Davis to all sorts of new, intriguing, genre-busting areas.

Like Endtroducing….. it is packed with mischievous ideas without losing its tightly structured coherence.

There’s gentle, Erik Satie-style piano on Ashes to Oceans, but Run the Jewels bring real tension to Nobody Speak, while the stentorian clang of the Ice Cube-sampling California and the demented drumming of Ghost Town suggest there’s something of a child in a sweetshop to Davis’s alchemy. Exhilarating.

(Mass Appeal)

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