Inside DJ Shadow's 'Public Works'

After getting dicked over on the 1st by the Kid Robot staff, today I returned to the store and found that they, in fact, still had the DJ Shadow box set I was previously lusting after still in stock - and even in my size, to boot. After getting it home, I promptly shot the hell out of it and bring you the hot hot details.

The box is adorned with cool artwork and a number on the back. Opening the box finds all the contents neatly wrapped in a paper holder with a "flamable materials" sticker. When you unpack it, you'll find...

Five t-shirts, the "Post No Bills" book, the Funky Skunk mix CD, and a manilla envelope full of stickers and buttons.

A quick judging of the t-shirt designs (and I'm making most of these names up): I'm not crazy about "Portrait", but Crane, Take Action, and Molotov are quite nice and I can see myself wearing them in public. The Grim Reaper World Tour shirt - which I should note, is not available outside of the box set (unlike the rest) - is particularly remarkable in that it takes what is already an amazing box set and just makes it approximately forty-six times better. (That's rounding down, mind you.) All the shirts have nothing printed on the back, are high quality cotton, and have a small Public Works logo thing on one arm.

The book contains a variety of pictures from Shepard Fairey's OBEY project; locations around the world where the pastes are up, some action shots as they go up. Very nice art book, perfect for a coffee table.

The CD - well, I haven't had much of a chance to listen to it much yet, but it sounds like a very well done mix with lots of obscure hip-hop source material. It's 66 minutes long, and the CD looks remarkably similar to the artwork on the front of the box/the Take Action shirt.

The envelope contents include buttons for the first four t-shirts, stickers for them, some Obey project stickers, and some advertising for the Public Works set.

All in all? I'd say it's definitely worth it, if you're a DJ Shadow fan.

(If you'd just like to browse all the linked pictures, check out my photos tagged with "publicworks".)