DJ Shadow: The MoWax Singles 93-97 – Box Set Review

DJ Shadow: The Mo’Wax Singles 93-97 (8 x 12″ Box Set)

Mo’Wax Records/(PIAS)

LP | DL

Out 30th June

Josh Davis releases an extremely handsome box set of an itch he had to scratch. A collection of his early singles and an immaculate gift for the diehards who devour his every move, and a glorious revision of his own history. MK Bennett basks in its glory.

Artefact: an object that has been made by a person, such as a tool or a decoration, especially one that is of historical interest.

Something that is seen in a scientific experiment or study that does not exist naturally, but has been caused by the way the experiment or study is done.

A fault in a digital image or in data that appears as a result of the methods used to create it.

Shadow was always a man for an artefact, some aesthetic monolith. Both the constructor and the deconstructor of his own myth, all the while trying to make the music equal the graphic, and sometimes vice versa. This battle is what sets him apart from his 90s peers and keeps him making music, with all its twists and turns and attempts to wrong-foot both his critics and himself. It is in this turmoil and restless energy that we arrive at the four parts of What Does Your Soul Look Like?, for example, a work of such quiet brilliance and skyscraping wonder that he could have stopped there and still cemented his place in the culture.

For those of us of a particular age & bearing, Shadow has soundtracked our lives, often with near supernatural good timing; he is the ghost in the machine, the king of reinvention in hip-hop terms. The particulars and minutiae of these recordings are realistically mostly interesting to trainspotters and obsessives. Our mission is simplicity itself. Does it still sound good? Does it sound audibly different? The anal retentiveness and singular focus are part of what makes him an extraordinary musician, so how does that translate into the listening experience itself? Ever alert to his own fandom, this box set seems built for those who appreciate the detail. In his own words:

“This box wasn’t made for the casual listener; it was made with the hardcore fan in mind. I’ve always felt that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and every step of the process was made with this philosophy firmly in mind. I had fun locating and resurrecting these songs, some of which still feel close to my consciousness as though they were made yesterday.” – DJ Shadow, December 2025

Painstakingly re-assembled in some cases from disintegrating DATs and restored as an art historian would restore an old master, it is a solidly beautiful thing. Like Citizen Kane in a snapback, this music was perfect straight out of the gate. Enjoy as a casual listener or a geek fanboy, the music ultimately speaks for itself, just as it did the first time we heard it.

Presented as 8 x 12” singles, it starts with the startlingly perfect In Flux, just over twelve minutes of brilliance that seemed at the time to be both a beginning and a full stop. How does he top this exactly? From the obscure voice samples to the eastern mysticism to the heaven-sent thud of the slow-motion drums, it is a travelogue of whispered siren calls, each more unexpected than the last. If it didn’t start a revolution, it certainly popularised it. Mo’Wax were on the edge of something back then, a label with a strong aesthetic and a strong desire to push Shadow into the world’s consciousness. Always working around the rhythm, the bass and the drums as the driver, it often detours before returning to the centre. The scratching is another voice, another layer.
Meanwhile, uptown, the DJ play…

The voices often act as links between phases, sometimes just drums before the bass rejoins, but there’s always a return to the hook, vocal, rhythmic or otherwise. There are more ideas in this one track than lie in heaven and Earth. It never gets bored because it never gets boring, and it still sounds like the future. Hindsight is a little simpler, a little shorter but still contains multitudes. A slightly malevolent intro leads into another superb beat, the snap of the snare against the burrowing bass and the eerie synths could be John Carpenter before the lone brass appears. The beat is always king, spare, sparse and wound like a spring.

Lost And Found (S.F.L.) was originally a split with the equally magnificent Kemuri by DJ Krush and it wasn’t the last time these two were featured together. Early Shadow was often attributed to The Groove Robbers, though it is likely he enjoyed the idea of the collective more than the reality. A singular mind works best alone. Starting with what sounds like the isolated drums from U2’s New Year’s Day, it is proof that you can make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, an old school scratch fest that ushers in the most relaxed organ groove to counterpoint the punch of the snare, before a guitar solo arrives, followed by some gorgeous eastern vocalising. It sounds like an updated version of David Axelrod’s work from the 70’s, Aphrodite’s Child, etc. The subtle layering at the end already has him on a par with his heroes. It is simply glorious.

Hardcore (instrumental) Hip Hop follows, with its now atypical radio dial intro before yet another drum break, a song so scratch-based it eventually descends into nothing but. The rhythmic splendour that anchors it, however, and the main voice sample (“is it good enough for ya?”) suggest it might be a pointed commentary to some long-forgotten foe. Fairly straightforward for Shadow, it nonetheless coalesces into excellence, seconds before a masterclass in turntablism drops the beat completely. Last Stop is beautifully aggressive, a head nodding delight of solid simplicity, similar to Liam Howlett’s early remixes for The Prodigy.

What Does Your Soul Look Like? Is a story in four parts. It always has been. An epoch-making and, for anyone else, career-defining work of rare genius, it immediately put him in the pantheon of not just great hip hop producers, like DJ Premier or Pete Rock, but great producers full stop, Norman Whitfield and Charles Stepney. Interestingly, he has sequenced this to tell a different story than previously. A changed narrative of what was clearly always meant to be a filmic sound, a cinematic aesthetic without the actual framing. The cyclic nature of this arrangement means the first guitar heard at the beginning of part two, which now starts off proceedings, is the last thing you hear at the end of part one, which now closes the run. If you have been listening to the standard sequence for thirty years, it puts a genuinely different spin on how you hear it. Everything returns to itself, resolute and complete. Experts may note sonic differences, but the rest of us can just enjoy its wide-screen wonder anew, a perfect argument for the idea of sampling as an art form. He may have wandered far and wide away from this, from the joyous Nobody Speak to the mighty Systematic with Nas, but this is the measure he is working against. Luckily for us, he is still trying to beat his own high-water mark. Like all hyper-focused perfectionists, there’s no end. The work is the whole thing. A monolith and a monster, it remains untouchable.

Midnight in a Perfect World refines the formula, a keyboard and piano drag the deliberately sluggish drums along until a mournful cello cuts in, while the clock on the wall reads a quarter past midnight. The stuttering vocal samples remain, but there is a slow move away from strictly beat-based music at this point. Hip Hop in his heart but refusing to be restricted, as evidenced by the Gab mix of Midnight.., a poetic and gothic walk through the tombstones, with the late, great Gift Of Gab from Blackalicious, a warning from the future. The drums edge toward drum and bass, and the whole thing is a delight, with only the hook remaining. Tellingly, the extended mix lists it as “vision” rather than “version”, and at almost twice the length of the standard radio mix, its travelogue is significantly different. Spreading and sprawling like Jabba the Hut, and occasionally as delightfully filthy, it reads like chapters in a book, not always linear but always returning to the source. Already churchified, it becomes more or less monastic, definitively majestic.

In actuality, the whole box set is broadly separated into segments, blocks of storytelling, and blocks of musical and artistic aesthetic excellence. Mutual Slump (album version) is up next and sounds as great as ever, with its solid grounding in its eventual place two-thirds of the way through Entroducing proper. It remains a drum extravaganza of impeccable manners. Stem (Cops ’N’ Robbers), disc 5, is, in part, Shadow’s revision of the Heat soundtrack. Building to a fast and furious peak of De Niro quotes and escalating drums, it is still alien and atmospheric despite the constantly shifting BPMs. Red Bus Needs To Leave remains a short and sweet turntablist’s dream, the technique both unshowy and wholly front and centre, skips, drags and pulls back like a supercharged Grandmaster.

The alternative mix of High Noon, with its 60s garage riff and four-to-the-floor beats, follows the music simpatico and adds a little drama to the already frenetic proceedings. The always gorgeous strings fight the riff all the way through; a glorious lack of resolution ensues. Devil’s Advocate (Heaven V. Hell – Bonus Beat ) is essentially a jazz drum solo with a public service broadcast juxtaposed neatly over the top. It sounds fantastic and ends with the clattering of bells and disdain. Organ Donor’s weird brilliance, a hip hop equivalent of the song they play in North American stadiums to hype the crowd, still sounds like a past and a future.

Camel Bobsled Race was originally DJ Q-Bert’s mix of already existing Shadow material. Here, you get the full Monty, bells and whistles included. There are worse ways to spend half an hour of your life drinking in accepted genius. Think of it as a prestige mega-mix, a foundational exercise, a great artist being painted by his own peers, Bacon sitting for Freud. Its only detriment is making you want to listen to the originals again.

The bonus disc will be a sort of holy grail to his devotees, unearthed early versions, snippets and sketches of historical value. When he says, “In all, roughly half of the songs presented on this box set appear in previously unreleased form, either as an alternate mix or edit, or in the case of the eighth disc in the series, primitive demos which represent literally my first ever bounces from MPC to DAT; the ‘proofs of concept,’ so to speak..” he is mentioning music people have waited decades to hear. It is buried treasure, pure and simple, pencil drawings and napkin scrawls made real. The embryonic In Flux is a bedroom funk drawing board, a glimpse into hip hop and electronica’s eventual future. Lost and Found is much the same but more evolved and involved, the instinctive understanding of how to build and frame already apparent, even missing the vocal samples. The collage-like effect served him well and long into the late 90s, his own trigger finger musicianship eventually taking over, though the drums remain a constant. The clip of What Does Your Soul Look Like? Part Two is fascinating too, like looking at the chassis of a Bugatti. Precision engineering revealed.

We finish with WDYSLL Part Four, which is, for some, the Guernica of the man’s music. The fact is, he carried on making classics, changing up his approach, his aesthetic and his songwriting on every progressive release. From the perfection of Six Days to the raucous Mariachi splendour of Nobody Speak, he maintained his path and struck gold like Sisu every time. He still collaborates with hip hop royalty because he can be trusted to bring the pain, three decades later. Shadow’s catalogue is flawless, a testament to staying your own course. And it started here.

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All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram