We teamed up with D-Styles back in the day to create this promo for DJ Shadow’s The Private Press, and later used it for pre-orders of The Outsider. The mix includes exclusive remixes and interpretations by D-Styles, and basically was our answer to Q-Bert’s Shadow mix, The Camel Bobsled Race. Shadow’s new LP, The Less You Know, The Better is due 9/27.

HHS Promo Archive: D-Styles Vs. DJ Shadow Megamix

    The theme that runs concurrent throughout the entire album is like “Faces of Death” on wax, as D-Styles incorporates a montage of different samples from horror movies, sensational serial killer documentaries, anti-drug videos, and the nightly news. But in all of its darkness, there is a certain comedy to it that makes it entertaining, as it’s more Dr. Octagon than Necro.  For instance, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” exhibits D-Styles as the “regular sort of guy, who liked hamburgers and chocolate ice cream”, as he manipulates horrific pianos with turntablist boom-bap among a psychosis of samples. Or “Cliffords Mustache”, which portrays him as the guy across the street with “cocaine on his mustache” who’s “into wife swapping and sex parties”, again manipulating edgy pianos and cutting up cries of fear. Sounds nasty on paper, but dope on wax. 

     However, towards the end, D-Styles strays off course a little with “Flowtation Device”, which still searches for an answer to the tired old question, “what is a DJ if he can’t scratch”, for the most part he sticks to the script. But the thing that makes this album a true accomplishment is that it trends the line between technique and style. So many times we’ve heard DJ’s try and make records that show off their skill, but musically sounds like a lot of noise. But D-Styles has done the impossible, seamlessly bringing technique and style together. Not only does this album play like one long piece of music, but listen to tracks like “John Wayne On Acid”, “The Murder Faktory”, or the posse cut “Felonius Funk” (feat. DJ Babu, Q-Bert & Melo-D), and then ask yourself if this sounds like a bunch of endless scratching.  In the liner notes, D-Styles writes “If at times you happen to forget that I created these songs solely from scratching, then I’ve succeeded.” Indeed he has.