Entroducing,DJ Shadow. Josh “Shadow” Davis is a man that needs no introduction and yet as he continues to reinvent himself and his career, we as his audience continue to listen to his music and watch him evolve. His latest release, Recontructed, delivers “the best” of DJShadow, and some new bangers to remind us after years in the music business, he’s still got it. But how can anyone really identify the few best of a man who has always delivered the best? A cd, vinyl, and multi disc box set. Reconstructed: The Best of DJ Shadow and Reconstructed: The Definitive DJ Shadow capture the career of a man who has never failed to be innovative, never hiding in anyone else’s shadow, but, rather creating his own

DJ Shadow hit the scene in 1996, but started experimenting with music years before. In college, he founded his own label called Solesides, and released Hip Hop Reconstruction mix tapes with rappers Blackalicious and Lyrics Born, two eventual Solesides artists.  But it was his 1996 album, Entroducing, that put his name on the music map. Made completely of samples, this new sound came to define instrumental hip hop. Time Magazine named Entroducing one of 100 top albums since 1954. After his 1998 Preemptive Strike release and his assistance on the production of the debut album by U.N.K.L.E., Shadow decided to transform Solesides in to an all new label called Quantum Projects. Many albums later, and numerous to ptracks, Shadow has worked with DJ Cut Chemist on a series of mixes, and became a video game character in DJ Hero. Through his many years in music, DJ Shadow has kept out of the press and social media, preferring to work, write, and record. But Shadow fans don’t take this to heart, as the large attendance by masses in Europe and America to his 2010 tour “Live From the Shadowsphere” proved. In 2012, this turn table icon once again delivers his best in Reconstructed, not that we ever expected anything less.

Reconstructed takes listeners on a journey through the musical career of a Hip-Hop/EDM pioneer. The down tempo “Midnight in a Perfect World” features a soft percussion rhythm, with a hint of a few piano keys, and the slight strum of a guitar. The cool female vocals blend perfectly with the old school hip hop MC that pervades the background. “High Noon” starts off by taking you back to the 70s funk of Studio 54, and then quickly  transitionsin to a very futuristic sound. One of the new tracks off the album entitled “Listen”, gives the feeling of a track off Pretty Lights Records. However similar though, the vocalist, reminiscent of Seal’s soft melodic tone, constructs these similarities in to all new sounds. “Won’t You Be” is a previously unreleased track that blends jazz vocals, hip hop beats, and a little Latin flavor. It moves you at once through the streets where hip hop was created, and on in to Havana. And then theres the electronic love ballad thatis “Blood on the Motorway”. Every song resonates in the style that is DJShadow’s own, and yet never fails to be completely different from everythingelse he does. It is this versatility and creativity that has earned Shadow his “best of” album, years of music making masterpieces, and masses of fans worldwide. Never the same and yet always recognizable, he is only a Shadow of himself, over and over.