Disco de DJ Shadow: “Preemptive Strike”

This record is getting ripped on by a couple of reviewers for not being Endtroducing... or Private Press. They all agree that High Noon and Organ Donor are all that make this cd worth having and that is some straight-up bull$!@#. This was my introduction to Shadow and it might have taken a little while to really sink in, but it hooked me on his music and made me vow to pick up everything he laid his lily white hands upon. This record is like Neitzche's void opening up in your mind and fixing its dark gaze right into the center of you. I've just heard Joseph Campbell mention that poetry is a metaphor for all the mysteries of existence and this for me is a transcendent poem that has helped glimpse behind the mask of the mysteries.

Preemptive Strike is mostly slow and plodding, but each beat dropped lands right in the center of my head. It builds and builds, creating mischief from disparate sources of sound, weaving together a web that seems to form a story that you could almost make out if some of the pieces weren't missing. Some of the most affecting spoken samples are from "Johnny Got His Gun", as I later found out. Go see that movie if you like this record. If you enjoy "Diamond Sea" by Sonic Youth, "1983..." by Jimi Hendrix or "Revolution #9" by the Beatles, give this record a couple of spins through a pair of huge headphones.

DJ Shadow, master mixer, reached his creative zenith in Preemptive Strike with music that forces the listener to manifest the meaning. Sound clips, definitive scratches, muted brass, and drum beats undulate through the smooth rhythm and produce a pensive mindset throughout the experience. There is no question of the skill involved to blend so many unique sounds into a medley. The album starts off with a percussion intro that fades into the mellow masterpiece In/Flux. Hindshot follows, giving you the impression of anxiety and fear with foreign ambiance. The next four tracks contain the thought provoking What Does Your Soul Look Like. The Soul series, dips into your conscience and emits a whole theological feel that undermines a continuous harmony. Highnoon and Organ Donor are no doubt, the most definitive tracks, radiating a feeling of euphoria through your body. The fast tempo offers diversity to the album compared to the calm In/Flux and Soul series, giving it an appealing array of emotional enigmas. The second disk features DJ Q-Bert along with Shadow, linking all of the tracks into a megamix. High and low, fast and slow, the megamix offers incredible energy. I cannot offer enough emphasis to how truly incredible this album is, please open your mind and buy it.

I bought this album after Entroducing, it is mostly work he made before that album came out. The composition of "What does your soul look like" is fantastic. The album blends together so well, yet each track is different. On the first track of Entroducing, he says he's "using and confusing beats that you've never heard" and it's true. I have practically worn this CD out listening to it, and I was watching the movie "Altered States" and there's a scene that he samples on "What does your soul look like (part 3)" (Track 6) that comes from that, it's a good movie and a good quote, but without knowing the background of the clip, it's really spooky. What I'm trying to say is that the samples he uses wouldn't seem like they should fit, but they blend really well with everything else. It's really one of the best albums that I know of, and I know of alot. The album is cohesive, and connected, unlike alot of recently produced albums which are just a collection of individual songs.

DJ Shadow, master mixer, reached his creative zenith in Preemptive Strike with music that forces the listener to manifest the meaning. Sound clips, definitive scratches, muted brass, and drum beats undulate through the smooth rhythm and produce a pensive mindset throughout the experiance. There is no question of the skill involved to blend so many unique sounds into a medley. The album starts off with a percussion intro that fades into the mellow masterpiece In/Flux. Hindshot follows, giving you the impression of anxiety and fear with foreign ambience. The next four tracks contain the thought provoking What Does Your Soul Look Like. The Soul series, dips into your conscience and emits a whole theological feel that undermines a continous harmony. Highnoon and Organ Donor are no doubt, the most definitive tracks, radiating a feeling of euphoria through your body. The fast tempo offers diversity to the album compared to the calm In/Flux and Soul series, giving it an appealing array of emotional enigmas. The second disk features DJ Q-Bert along with Shadow, linking all of the tracks into a megamix. High and low, fast and slow, the megamix offers incredible energy. I cannot offer enough emphasis to how truly incredible this album is, please open your mind and buy it.

Echoes of `Endtroducing.....' are everywhere on Preemptive Strike: in the horns drifting through `In/Flux' and `What Does Your Soul Look Like? (Part 2)', underneath the pulsing noir of `Hindsight' and the desert-showdown meets 70s espionage soundtrack of `High Noon'.

That DJ Shadow is an artist is no question, his music is an aural equivalent of a painting canvas with percussion as the base coat, scratching for the brushes and samples as the colours. His talent is being able to step back and see the bigger picture ensuring every element fits correctly and that's why his records are distinctive. Nothing sounds out of place in any of his songs; it's almost as if they always existed waiting to be uncovered. Hearing the four parts of `What Does Your Soul Look Like?' is like flicking a radio dial through the channels of late twentieth century music. Guitars, spoken word, saxophone loops, stacked percussion and orchestral flourishes all fade in and out at will like sketches from a dusty stack of records Shadow found in grandma's basement.

Shadow lets the instruments absorb and fill up the space, rather than jumping directly into a song to get the listener's attention. His hypnotic use of percussion sets the scene and builds the songs slowly through progressive layers utilising silence and abrupt time changes to create a sonic journey. Samples are deftly manipulated through scratching, adding shifting textures like radio static interrupting a news broadcast. This approach gives `Preemptive Strike' a harder, more immediate sound that is no less compelling than `Endtroducing.....' just more assertive.

And while `Endtroducing.....' gave Shadow a bigger palette to work from, `Preemptive Strike' does the opposite and that is reason enough to have this album alongside `Endtroducing.....' to hear the origins of where Shadow came from and where he ended up.