DJ Shadow Announces ‘Our Pathetic Age’ Album, Shares Track, ‘Urgent, Important, Please Read’

DJ Shadow has just announced a new album, Our Pathetic Age, which is set for release on 15 November on Mass Appeal. In advance, he has also shared a new track, ‘Urgent, Important, Please Read’, which you can check out below.

‘Urgent, Important, Please Read’ features contributions from three rappers. Rockwell Knuckles and Tef Poe are two gruff underground rap veterans from St. Louis. (Tef Poe is also an activist and a big part of the Ferguson protests a few years ago), while Daemon hails from Italy. On ‘Urgent, Important, Please Read,’ the three of them take turns rapping about our dystopian present over Shadow’s thunderous drum break and distorto-guitar chords.

According to reports in Stereogum, DJ Shadow’s forthcoming album, Our Pathetic Age will be a full-length divided into two parts. The first half, like …Endtroducing, is entirely instrumental. The second is utterly jammed with big-name collaborators. Shadow has already shared ‘Rocket Fuel,’ his collaboration with De La Soul. But plenty of other luminaries also appear on Our Pathetic Age.

Nas and Pharaohe Monch, two eternal rap legends, show up on the same song. The Wu-Tang Clan trio of Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, and Inspectah Deck appear on one track, and on another, the New York rapper Dave East — who plays Method Man on Wu-Tang: An American Saga — shows up. Shadow’s old Quannum collaborators the Gift Of Gab and Lateef The Truth Speaker are in there, too. So are Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring, Interpol’s Paul Banks, and Wiki. And on ‘Kings & Queens,’ Shadow again steps into the spotlight with Run The Jewels.

It’s been more than two decades since the pioneering Bay Area turntable auteur released his much-acclaimed Endtroducing… and essentially put together UNKLE’s heady psychedelic classic Psyence Fiction. And it’s been three years since Shadow released The Mountain Will Fall, his last proper album.

Our Pathetic Age includes the following tracks:

‘Nature Always Wins’
‘Slingblade’
‘Intersectionality’
‘Beauty, Power, Motion, Life, Work, Chaos, Law’
‘Juggernaut’
‘Firestorm’
‘Weightless’
‘Rosie’
‘If I Died Today’
‘My Lonely Room’
‘We Are Always Alone’
‘Drone Warfare’ (Feat. Nas & Pharaohe Monch)
‘Rain On Snow’ (Feat. Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, & Raekwon)
‘Rocket Fuel’ (Feat. De La Soul)
‘C.O.N.F.O.R.M.’ (Feat. Gift Of Gab, Lateef The Truth Speaker, & Infamous Taz)
‘Small Colleges (Stay With Me)’ (Feat. Wiki & Paul Banks)
‘JoJo’s Words’ (Feat. Stro)
‘Kings & Queens’ (Feat. Run The Jewels)
‘Taxin’ (Feat. Dave East)
‘Dark Side Of The Heart’ (Feat. Fantastic Negrito & Jumbo Is Dr.ama)
‘I Am Not A Robot (Interlude)’
‘Urgent, Important, Please Read’ (Feat. Rockwell Knuckles, Tef Poe, & Daemon)
‘Our Pathetic Age’ (Feat. Samuel T. Herring).

Listen to the Best of DJ Shadow On Apple Music and Spotify.

Format: UK English