The Private Press

1	Letter From Home
2	Fixed Income
3	Un Autre Introduction
4	Walkie Talkie
5	Giving Up The Ghost
6	Six Days
7	Mongrel...
8	...Meets His Maker
9	Right Thing/Gdmfsob
10	Monosylabic
11	Mashin On The Motorway
12	Blood On The Motorway
13	You Can't Go Home Again
14	Letter From Home
15	Giving Up The Ghost
16	Pushin Buttons (Live)
17	Disavowed
18	Treach Battle Beats

Barnes & Noble

DJ Shadow (a.k.a. Josh Davis) has always been ahead of the curve. His dizzying debut, 1996's Endtroducing..., was a standard bearer for bedroom DJ culture as an art form even as it documented the nascent hip-hop-dance music hybrid. So his long-awaited follow-up -- which arrives after a six-year gap during which Shadow worked on the U.N.K.L.E. project with Mo Wax chief James Lavelle, helped set up the hip-hop indie label Quannum Projects, scored the film Dark Days, and released the singles comp Preemptive Strike -- is preceded by lofty expectations, most of which will be met by the artful Private Press. The disc finds Shadow digging deeper into the crates than ever for obscure, perfect-fit samples that lend the disc a keen retro flavor. While lesser minds might graft one pilfered hook, MC Hammer-style, onto their own predictable beats, on The Private Press Shadow extracts slim slices of sound from existing platters and layers them among his own concoctions with such finesse, that the results jet to their own sonic plane. Several tracks hark back to the '80s: "Walkie Talkie" is an old-school-style rap track -- raw beats, serious scratches, and boastful vocal samples -- that still sounds fresh as cream; new wave synths charge "You Can't Go Home Again"; and the lonesome psychedelic ballad "Blood on the Motorway" features arena-rock vocals that suggest Journey's Steve Perry. But by contrast, the breezy "Six Days," also spun around a mournful vocal sample, morphs into sultry lounge-tronica. Shadow's grooves are sinister on "Fixed Income" and "Mongrel Meets His Maker" and driving on "Mashin' on the Motorway," featuring guest vocals from Quannum bro Lateef. Back in the '90s, Shadow may have unwittingly unleashed a bevy of bedroom knob-twiddlers eager to equal his homespun artistry, but cozily settled into the new millennium, he once again proves himself to be of his own time and place. Lydia Vanderloo

All Music Guide

Five years on from his breakout Endtroducing..., hip-hop's reigning recluse showed he still had plenty of tricks up his sleeve -- as well as many more rare grooves left for sampling. Shadow had kept a low recording profile during past years, putting out only a few mix sets alongside a pair of collaborations (Psyence Fiction by UNKLE and Quannum Spectrum). That lack of product actually helps The Private Press display just how good a producer he is; the depth of his production sense and the breadth of his stylistic palette prove just as astonishing the second time out. His style is definitely still recognizable, right from the start; "Fixed Income" and "Giving Up the Ghost" carefully layer wistful-sounding string arrangements overtop cavernous David Axelrod breaks (the latter a bit reminiscent of "Midnight in a Perfect World" from Endtroducing...). From there, though, DJ Shadow seldom treads the same path twice, switching from strutting disco breaks ("Walkie Talkie") to melancholy '60s pop that sounds like the second coming of Procol Harum ("Six Days"). "Right Thing/GDMFSOB" is pure breakers revenge, boasting accelerating, echoey electro breakbeats and enough confidence to recycle Leonard Nimoy's "pure energy" sample and make it work. Later, Shadow turns to pure aggro for the hilarious road-rage comedy of "Mashin' on the Motorway" (with Lateef the Truth Speaker behind the wheel), then summons the conceptual calm of a David Axelrod classic on the very next track with solo piano and a vocal repeating Bible text. Fans may have grown impatient waiting almost six years for the second DJ Shadow LP, but a classic like The Private Press could last at least that long, and maybe longer. [Initially, most copies of The Private Press on sale in America included a track available for download as a bonus.] John Bush

Rolling Stone

1/2 In a time when the music world is going through a real-life attack of the clones, DJ Shadow remains a valuable phantom menace. Rob Sheffield

Vibe

Shadow is working angles his contemporaries haven't thought of yet. He's the master of creating a ghostly, almost mystical ambience within the context of a vigorous jam. Marc Weingarten

The Fader

There are moments on The Private Press that invoke infinite hope and possibility, when the music takes off like a toy rocket into the sky. Eric Ducker