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've always loved electro and old school rap. Stuff where if you get a feel for it, it's unmistakable and it's also undeniable..."

"85-86 that's when you start hearing samples in rap records so it went from DJs playing those records to people putting it in the sampler."

This is the first part of a series of interviews with Josh Davis about what influenced and shaped him to become the artist that we know as DJ Shadow. Let's go back to when it all began... Jon You were born on the 29th of June 1972 in San Jose, California to Larry and Penni. Can you tell me where your family came from originally? Josh Most of my early memories were from a town we lived in called Middletown, California, just with my mom because they separated when I was about t

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