DJ Shadow

Recorded live at London's Brixton Academy, this 21-track collection revisits classic Shadow opuses from much-loved LPs like Endtroducing…, The Private Press and Preemptive Strike, along with some of his collaborations with U.N.K.L.E. Next-level hip-hop and raw funk as only Shadow can deliver.

Recombinant is the idea with any DJ, but who'd expect even Shadow to make a live album worth hearing twice? Yet this hits-and-obscurities set is cannier than that of rock bands with twice as many titles to choose from: pieces of Endtroducing and Private Press reconfigured to mesh with pieces of Preemptive Strike and Psyence Fiction while and generating the same old illusion of inevitability. Sounded so right it got me to watch the bonus DVD version. Some of it, anyway--better his wrists and fingers than the superimposed film clips of freeway traffic and such assembled for the ticket buyers. (Grade - A-)