For the record, "What Does Your Soul Look Like" should be played starting with Part 2, then 3, 4, and back to 1. The article is written in a way which suggests the song should be heard properly from 1 through 4, but in this case, the song starts with 2. Also, the Heath Brothers and Phillips are not pitched down in anyway.

You lose credibility with me when you actually call DJ Shadow "Google-riffic", are you a Justin Beiber fan or some 42 year old woman writing about Bieber for Tiger Beat? Then to add insult to injury, you call this article "Digger, Please"? To The Stranger: next time hire someone who has a bit of sensibility and actually knows what he's writing about instead of doing a quick search on Google-riffic Google and coming up with nothing more than an exaggerated Wiki entry. Thank you.

Not to mention that Shadow recycles the same third over and over again on multiple albums and hasn't released anything decent and original in eight years.

@2: Umm... He's only released 3 solo studio albums (not counting Preemptive Strike), all of which were great, and none of which recycled material (The Outsider was something of a stylistic departure that a LOT of fans disliked; it's actually a very good album, it's just not [entirely, there are a few tracks] pure-sample-constructed trip-hop). The live albums with Cut Chemist are great (none of which recycle the same material from the solo albums), and Bombay the Hard Way and Bombay 2 (both with Dan the Automator, and both unavailable due to copyright issues; thank god for Gnutella in the early 2000's, else I wouldn't know about them) are amazing, particularly for fans of 70's/80's Bollywood or Indian music generally.

Also, @1: I'm not sure you can assert that "What Does Your Soul Look Like?" "should" "properly" be played in the album order: why keep the part ordering as it's listed if the only "proper" sequence is 2,3,4,1? It's not like the composition doesn't "work" if it's played 1,2,3,4. In fact, the end of Part 1 is a direct segue into Part 2 - the set actually functions as a closed loop that can be played on indefinite repeat, starting with ANY of the parts and playing them in order.

Also, "Google-riffic [sic]" is clearly a joke; the author is just commenting on the fact that "encyclopedic" has much less meaning in the era of Google (whereby Google's cache servers are the largest repository of information on the globe; perhaps "Wikipedic" would have been better?). I don't think The Stranger needs a more-knowledgeable author, I think its readers need to be better at critical thinking and more-aware of the topic on which they're commenting if they're going to attack the author's knowledge. :-P

Breakanoimics Vol. 3 is a good history of Shadow's and others sample material.

Shadow was on Gilles Peterson's BBC show a couple of weeks ago and it was enlightening to hear him talk about his creative process and music in general. Looking forward to his new album dropping (next year?).

Das Evan - you're a typical uptight Seattle hipster douchebag.

Das Evan -

You're a typical Seattle hipster douchebag.

Get over yourself and lighten up.