Brainfreeze

Decades after its limited-release, heavily-bootlegged 1999 drop date, the legend of DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist’s two-sided/two-halved Brainfreeze mix still looms large. But it’s not just because they have Good Taste in old vinyl — or because their choice to use nothing but 45s, a tricky feat considering how difficult they are to DJ with, added an extra dimension of challenge to their scratch routines. It’s because Shadow and Chemist have that beathead obsession with making the pieces fit together in funny and surprising ways. It might be a simple-seeming trick to juxtapose a sample source with a song that samples it, but the segue from Albert King’s “Cold Feet” into Ultimate Force’s “I’m Not Playing” (and back) is pulled off with the kind of exquisite timing that makes it feel less like an elbow-meets-ribs nudge than a natural blend. They consistently pull off this careful balance of “hey, get it?” referentiality and comedic side-routes, like the absolutely preposterous namesake-inspiring 1967 7-Eleven tie-in single “Dance the Slurp” — which they blend into Kraftwerk’s “Numbers,” for god’s sake, and from there into both Shadow’s “The Number Song” and Cut Chemist’s remix thereof. But it’s all to acknowledge that funk’s supposed to be a good time. There’s a lot of upbeat dance-craze cheer to the selections on display, from a handful of New Orleans cult favorite Eddie Bo’s deepest grooves to a slew of hopelessly obscure bands (The Showmen Inc., The Nu People, The Soul Lifters) who released one fire 7” and nothing else. Brainfreeze stands out a bit more for its curatorial oddities and the light heart/heavy beat vibe than it does for any scratch pyrotechnics (even if they can’t resist at least building a couple flashy centerpieces around Rufus Thomas’s “Itch and Scratch” and Clifton Chenier and Grandma Gee Gee’s “Just Keep On Scratching,” among others). But the fingerprints of both DJs are still left all over the wax here, figuratively speaking — all they need are a few well-timed rewinds and transitional cuts to segue masterfully from one moment to the next, and maybe a bit of self-referential commentary throughout — hey, aren’t those the songs Chemist flipped for Jurassic 5’s “Jayou” and Shadow for “Organ Donor”? Turns out even mixtapes can contain lore.