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| DJ Shadow (a/k/a Josh Davis) is a 24-year-old record collector froma college town in California who's famous in London for inventingwhat is called trip-hop. Armed with a sampler, a sequencer, and thevinyl he gave up on cataloguing in 1989, Shadow collages music outof other music the way early hip hop did, which isn'teasy--Endtroducing . . . DJ Shadow (FFFR/Mo' Wax)took him six solidmonths. The 13 dense, varied tracks--some under a minute, some overnine--tend to be contemplative even if drum-driven. Less songs thancompositions and designed for headphones rather than dance floors,their only vocals are sampled spoken-word and comedy bits. Socuriosity seekers may not find them as evocative as do listeners onShadow's wavelength. But they're so rich and eclectic, and spun outwith such a sense of flow, that this album establishes the kind ofconvincing aural reality other British techno experimenters onlyfantasize about. Comparatively more accessible isPre-Millennium Tension(Island) by Tricky, who made his name if not fortune last year withthe depressive trip-hop adventureMaxinquaye. Fame has rendered hima little jauntier, but anyone who wants a notion of how vastlydisparate sampled textures can be should put his electronicdoldrums up against theText missing. Playboy, Oct. 1996
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