The name John Hillyard might be unfamiliar to many of our readers, even though you’ve likely seen him before. He is the man on the cover of US pressings of DJ Shadow’s single Midnight in a Perfect World (FFRR, 1997), and the source of many samples from Shadow’s seminal LP Endtroducing..... (Mo Wax, 1996). So who was he, and why did his photo appear on the Midnight record? 🎵 This article can be read while listening to a selection of songs John Hillyard worked on, songs made b

"I remember James Lavelle saying "I'm looking for the holy grail for Mo Wax in Japan," and so this was already very intriguing for me..."

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Endtroducing, DJ Shadow’s debut album. It was composed almost entirely of samples, and many of them were collected in the basement of Records, a record store in Sacramento, California, which has since closed. Records was opened in 1973 by Orin “Ed” Hartman and Lee Cotten. Ed had previously co-owned another store, The Broadway Record Center, which opened in 1960, while Lee had previously sold records through mail-order and advertised his

"I love the cat among the records! It's the notion that everything there has already gone through some kind of human cycle."