Once you've, in a modest way, changed the face of popular music, what happens next? That has been the dilemma facing DJ Shadow Josh Davis in the six years since 'Endtroducing. . .' was released. Should he copy the intricate melancholy of that debut and be accused of repeating himself? Or should he follow the advice of his recent single, 'You Can't Go Home Again', forge a new route for sampladelic music and risk disappointing his more conservative fans?
It's a tough decision and one which, perhaps understandably, Davis fudges. Unlike 'Endtroducing. . .', 'The Private Press' doesn't hang together as one microscopically-detailed, engrossing piece. Rather, it feels like the work of a man groping his way, fastidiously but uncertainly, towards the next level. Half the time, he's recreating his trademark looming, psychedelic gravitas ('Giving Up The Ghost', 'Mongrel. . . Meets His Maker') in an impressive, but slightly boring, fashion.
Alternatively, he's trying something else: joyless DJ skills demos ('Walkie Talkie', 'GDMFSOB') that recall his 'Brainfreeze' work with Cut Chemist; a lame, gimmicky rap track with Quannum's Lateef ('Mashin' On The Motorway'); faintly preposterous, ska-tinged synthrock ('You Can't Go Home Again'). Only one wild experiment really succeeds, and that's 'Monosyllabik', a genuinely odd hybrid of DJ breaks and minimalist electronica that recalls, if anyone, Warp's hip-hop monk, Req.
What links all this (very) loosely together is Davis' enduring obscurantism. Nowadays, rare records are too populist for this most determined of crate-diggers. Only the surreally arcane tunes made by keen amateurs and released in tiny quantities (the Private Presses of the title) will suffice. It seems chronically elitist, of course, but it's this attention to detail that still elevates Davis above his peers.
Almost certainly, you'll never have heard any of these samples before. 'The Private Press' is at its strongest when he lets those samples run, forsakes complete decimation for sympathetic reconstruction. 'Six Days' and 'Blood On The Motorway' are built around long vocal cuts, transformed from dubious origins into epics of profound and disorienting cosmic soul. And it's here that the unlikeliest revelation comes: it might have misfired horribly on the UNKLE album, but the way forward for the Shadow just might be the song. How radically unradical is that?
