Consumer Guide Album

DJ Shadow: Action Adventure [Mass Appeal/Liquid Amber, 2023]
I have no idea how or indeed why the human born Josh Davis selects, refurbishes, juxtaposes, and sequences the mostly electronic textures, beats, scraps, notes, phrases, lines, and occasionally even choruses from which he constructs what undeniably ends up his music, although it's safe to presume that at the very least he thinks they "sound good" that way. Admittedly, my own first response to his first album in four years was something like "Nuh." But a few plays in I began to notice that just as individual pieces some of them sounded good to me as well and it was off to the party, then exhibition, then aesthetic experience. No Endtroducing because nothing is. Little if any of the sneak humanism of The Private Press either. Organic whole, not really--too many moving parts. So think of it as a sound collage, or if you prefer a playlist with feints and occasionally ldetours that never vacates your pleasure zone or loses its way. A-