The Mountain Will Fall LP

Album Details

DJ Shadow, widely acknowledged as a crucial figure in the development of experimental, instrumental hip-hop, returns in 2016 with The Mountain Will Fall, his first full length release since 2011. The 12-track album finds DJ Shadow exploring new realms in addition to the deep samples and kinetic soundscapes that helped to launch his career 25 years ago. On The Mountain Will Fall he's shifted further toward original composition, a vast experimentation of beats and textures, synthesizers and live instruments including horns and woodwinds. The album features Run The Jewels, Nils Frahm, Matthew Halsall, Ernie Fresh and more.

The seeds for the The Mountain Will Fall were planted after two years of touring and DJ Shadow's last full length and retrospective box set releases. While taking some time to recalibrate, he was invited by the Low End Theory to do a DJ set, something he hadn't done in over a decade. It led to festival DJ sets, performing with Diplo, listening deeply to several subgenres of electronic music, doing remixes and the exploration of Ableton Live software - a new way for this profoundly original voice to compose and create. DJ Shadow also launched his own label for the release of his work and other artists, called Liquid Amber.

The title track and album opener is smoldering - an opening salvo of sounds, beats and pitches that shift, phase, shimmer and implode. A falling cascade of picked guitar notes opens "Nobody Speak," a blazing statement-maker featuring Run The Jewels. The warped, jazz-tinted "Ashes To Oceans" features Matthew Halsall, and "The Sideshow" is Shadow's unbridled scratch track/old school hip hop send up with MC Ernie Fresh. The album artwork was designed by UK street artist Paul Insect, who also designed the art for Shadow's 2006 album Outsider.