Action Adventure by DJ Shadow

Today will forever be known as the day I learned that DJ Shadow’s 1996 top-100 all-time masterpiece Endtroducing… is the Guinness World Records’ holder for “the first album to be recorded using only sampled sounds.” This feels somehow dubious / impossible, but I suppose someone had to be first, and it only adds to the greatness that is DJ Shadow’s debut. But that album is not what I’m here to talk about.

Action Adventure is DJ Shadow’s fantastic 7th studio album (his 6th album, Our Pathetic Age was #21 in 2019, and his 5th, The Mountain Will Fall, #9 in 2016). Where those two previous albums featured big-name guest vocals from the likes of Run the Jewels, Raekwon, and De La Soul, Action is almost entirely instrumental. Aside from the random vocal sample, (such as the lovely sample “All my records are tapes” repeated throughout “All My”), only “You Played Me” feels like a standalone pop song (see the video above). That vocal track, sampled from Jan Jerome’s 1990 R&B B-side “Baby, Got Me Goin,” gives the song an 80s throw-back vibe that will have you bouncing in your seat.

Lacking vocals, the rest of the album feels like it could be the soundtrack to one amazing late 20th Century movie, or perhaps the collected instrumental versions of an album that was originally released with rapping and singing on top. That’s not to say the album is not good — it is great, at being the background to your day as you go about cleaning the house, or hosting a party, or perhaps even on a run. Instead of being the soundtrack to an older movie, it can be the soundtrack to your life today. Watch the video for and listen to “Ozone Scraper,” and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

With a career nearly 30 years in length, DJ Shadow — aka Josh Davis — still has an amazing ability to tap into samples and sounds from the past and make them sound entirely new. Action Adventure fits right in with the work he did on the first U.N.K.L.E. album, 1998’s Psyence Fiction, and his 2006 album The Outsider. He remains a magician at creating beats and blending sounds, and is showing no signs of slowing down.