Here is the second collection of Shadow rarities I'll be posting. I was intending to post the lossless versions this week but rather they will appear next week. The same will probably go for the third volume which is sourced entirely from lossy tracks. This volume though, like the first, is comprised entirely of tracks taken from lossless sources and, as such, the lossless version posted next week will be free of transcodes. Once again, art is "borrowed" from Napalm filled tires' flickr page which you should visit immediately. Enjoy!
DJ Shadow - Foresight
01 High Noon Intro - You Are Going On A Musical Trip
This is the intro from the High Noon EP.
02 100 Metre Dash
Excellent B-Side to Six Days which, like most of the post-Endtroducing... singles, seems to have fallen into obscurity due to major label release policy and a lack of promotion.
03 The Number Song (Cut Chemist Party Mix)
I'm only posting this because there seems to be a slight difference between the master used on the earlier releases of this mix compared to the one available on the Deluxe Edition of Endtroducing..., although I might just be hearing things.
04 DJ Shadow vs. Keane - We Might As Well Be Strangers (Remix)
Definitely of the Outsider era, this mix contains no samples and is more of a digital creation on Shadow's part. I've heard from a lot of people who don't care for this track but I like it.
05 Treach Battle Beat
A B-Side to You Can't Go Home Again, this is a stripped down instrumental of Walkie Talkie. I have to wonder whether Shadow chose Home as the first single or the label did since most people I've spoken with don't think it was the right record to go with. Special promos of Monosylabik were given out in the UK prior to that single's release and I think that would have been a better cut to go with, but it is rather experimental so maybe it wouldn't have been a good move after all. What makes this track's appearance all the more ironic is that Walkie Talkie was paired with Mashin' On The Motorway as the next single release, probably promoting the album better but pigeonholing Shadow more as a party rocker than the brilliant collage artist that he is.
Brilliant? Yeah, I said it. I'm waiting for someone to say I'm kissing his ass and yeah, to an extent I am, but I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it.
06 Dark Days (Main Theme)
The theme to the Dark Days documentary. That sentence reads kind of redundant but I know a lot of people who have no idea that the documentary exists. You'd be better off visiting the wikipedia reference for the film to find out more about it, and you should definitely see the film!
07 Untitled Heavy Beat (Part 1 & 2)
This instrumental appears on the soundtrack for The End Of Violence.
08 Cage - Grand Ol' Party Crash (feat. Jello Biafra)
This appeared on Cage's album, Hell's Winter, as well as the second of Shadow's Rogue Gallery picture disc single releases as Donald The Merciless, although the track was unchanged. The instrumental is totally outside of Shadow's general style and rather excellent, although the vocals and Bush-bashing are really dated. Jello, in particular, gets pretty damn annoying as the track goes on, regardless of how you feel about GWB. Cage's verses, while dated, are still excellent. Nonetheless, another example of why just about everyone should stay away from writing political songs about current events as they do not age well.
09 Disavowed
Another B-Side for You Can't Go Home Again, Zach de la Rocha is credited as a co-writer and co-producer although his only contribution appears to be the live drums. Maybe a vocal version is sitting in Shadow's vault. This also appeared on The Private Repress which is a Japan-only B-Sides and Remixes compilation.
10 Divine Intervention (feat. Divine Styler)
This track appeared on the Quannum Spectrum compilation although it fades earlier here so as to remove the additional DJ chatter from the end.
11 Handsome Boy Modeling School - Holy Calamity (Bear Witness II) (feat. DJ Shadow & DJ Quest)
This is probably more of a Shadow track than a Handsome Boy one, but Prince Paul and the Automator get writing credits alongside Shadow so they're probably in there too. Quest provides the turntable pyrotechnics. There is a note in the credits that reads "For all three of you that care, DJ Shadow would like to state that all breaks used in this song were taken from the original source vinyl and not bootlegs or reissues. Suckers.", for which I must assume I'm one of those three people, give or take a few thousand.
12 Blackalicious - Halfway Home
This track appears as the second half of Paragraph President on Blackalicious' Blazing Arrow despite only being listed in the liner notes. Shadow also played this on the In Tune and On Time tour.
13 Blues Explosion - Fed Up and Low Down
This is taken from the Blues Explosion's Damage album which features a number of collaborative productions from Dan The Automator, David Holmes and on this track, DJ Shadow. Just to clarify, the Blues Explosion is the same group as The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, just dropping Spencer from the name despite the fact he still leads the band. This is in a similar vein to the aforementioned Cage track.
14 War Is Hell
This track started like as an UNKLE demo and then made an appearance in Dark Days, although it again appears, albeit in a more finished state, on the Diminishing Returns mix and received yet another release on a limited single alongside the instrumental version of The Outsider Theme, although both of those tracks also appeared on the soundtrack to Vexille. Despite never receiving a wide, standard release, this track must hold some importance to Shadow since it's been reissued so many times in limited or hard to find formats.
15 Dark Days (Spoken For Mix)
The B-Side to the Dark Days single, this mix features dialogue from the film scratched in over an alternate version of the Theme.
16 (Letter From Home)
This (Letter From Home), a series of peculiar interludes that appeared on The Private Press, was issued as a B-Side of sorts to You Can't Go Home Again and should not be confused with either of the Letters that appear on the album. A fourth Letter was issued as the B-Side of the limited Monosylabik single, although I haven't heard from anyone who has that track or has heard it. These tracks, in case you're unfamiliar with them, are difficult to discern the legitimacy of, as in to say it's unclear whether they're all legitimate recordable messages made in the earlier parts of the 1900s or merely made to sound as such. If they are legit, they are truly the most private of private pressings, but even if not they're still remarkable ephemera from Shadow's excellent yet under-appreciated second album under his name.
17 Midnight In A Perfect World (Extended Vision)
Version of Vision? Either way, this is the extended version that appears on the Midnight single and hasn't been released elsewhere.
18 Last Stop
A bonus beat of sorts for the original Hardcore Hip-Hop 12".
19 Handsome Boy Modeling School - The Runway Song Part 2 (Kid Koala & DJ Shadow Ready For Their Close-Ups)
This was initially listed for inclusion on the standard issue of Handsome Boy Modeling School's second album, White People, though it and another track showed up only on the instrumental version of the album. Another peculiar move on the part of Elektra to remove tracks which would have raised the visibility of the album or a decision by the group not to include fluffier pieces that would further dilute an album obviously less than superior to it's predecessor?
20 High Noon Outro
Again, from the High Noon EP.
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