DJ Shadow – The Mountain Will Fall (2xLP, 10th Anniversary Edition)

DJ Shadow’s The Mountain Will Fall arrived in 2016, two decades after Endtroducing....., and it catches Josh Davis reworking the methods that made his name. The album shifts toward live instrumentation and newer production tools rather than relying only on the dense sample collage of his early records, while still keeping that restless cut-and-paste instinct intact. That tension gives the record its character: part veteran statement, part reboot.

The collaborators matter. Nobody Speak, featuring Run The Jewels, became a Gold-certified single and brings a wiry, funny jolt of rap energy; elsewhere, Nils Frahm, Matthew Halsall, Ernie Fresh, G Jones and Bleep Bloop help widen the palette without turning the album into a guest parade. You can hear Shadow moving between old-school hip-hop, tense electronic production, jazz inflections and more abrasive textures, with tracks like Depth Charge and Ashes to Oceans showing how comfortable he is making those contrasts feel deliberate rather than scattered.

This anniversary edition also underlines how well the album sits in Shadow’s catalogue. It is less about nostalgia than about hearing a producer with long-established habits testing new ones in public. If you like DJ Shadow at his most exploratory, this is one of his more revealing later records.

Reviews

• it just feels impressive in its inventiveness – The Guardian