DJ Shadow on tech, El-P and The Mountain Will Fall
Master sampler DJ Shadow talks The Skinny through technical theatrics, Run the Jewels' inspirational power and the importance of keeping it fresh
The Endtroducing… producer needs little introduction. Josh Davis is a forefather of instrumental hip-hop; his revolutionary approach to sampling on that 1996 album changed the course of modern music making. He has united a cult following all over the globe, and although his records since the 90s have thrown a couple of curveballs, DJ Shadow remains the undisputed king of his craft.
A virtuosic approach to the turntables and a mammoth record collection often see Shadow pinned as a purist – but nothing could be further from the truth. Since the Millennium bug gave us all a hankering for technological tricks, DJ sets have swollen in spectacle; DJ Shadow is not one to be left behind.
His infamous Shadowsphere – a whopping, spherical set that reflects trippy visuals while shrouding the man himself in mystery – set the bar high, but in honour of his fifth studio album The Mountain Will Fall, Shadow’s got some new tricks up his sleeve. The Skinny caught up with Davis just three days into his huge summer tour.
"I didn’t grow up wanting to be an entertainer on stage. I didn’t seek that out"
On Re-imagining His Live Shows...
I didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, this time there’s two Shadowspheres!’ or like, you know, ‘This time it’s a square!’ It’s more about a new concept. So, without giving a lot away, I think it’s come together in a way that we didn’t even really anticipate. I work very closely with my long term visuals guy [Ben Stokes], and we talk about all these things we want to do, but last week was the first time I got to see them rendered out and on the screen. I remember, vividly, sitting down with him and talking about what we wanted to do on a technical level. After we feel like it’s a viable option, then we start kicking around thematic concepts. It’s even more convincing and, I think, groundbreaking than we thought it would be.
On the Importance of Planning…
Think of it this way. Definitely the hardest thing I have to do, I think in my entire career, is to plan a show that works in almost every conceivable setting. Take the first shows of this tour – last weekend, for example, the very first show was a sold-out 12,000 seat arena in the northern part of France, with almost exclusively 90s New York rap acts and then myself. The next show is a dedicated 800-capacity room and it’s a hard ticket – they’re coming to see me. Then, this Friday, I play the Montreux Jazz Festival… so you can imagine trying to build a programme of music which works in all three of those settings! But so far so good. I always feel, when I’m doing these big shows, that you don’t have the luxury of having off nights. I feel too much of a sense of responsibility for people who pay their money, and I take it very seriously.
On the Pros and Cons of Touring...
I think my experiences are a little bit unique in the sense that I was not really established in the States before I started going abroad. I was doing a lot of different things, and I’d already put out records, done mixes on the radio… I just hadn’t done shows. Primarily because it was just not something that was done back then. Hip-hop DJs didn’t tour on their own. It wasn’t something that anybody did. It really wasn’t until I started coming to England, and to Germany and France, that I started doing DJ shows. As my records started to become known, I started to do festivals. I mean, first off, I didn’t grow up wanting to be an entertainer on stage. I didn’t seek that out. It’s not something that really appealed to me growing up. But I feel like if you’re making music you have an obligation to represent it live. Yeah; I do it to support the music that I make, because I want people to see that the music is more important than my hang-ups about being in front of people.
On CDJs, Myspace and Discovering New Technologies...
I feel like I’m never going to be the earliest adopter of anything! Know what I mean? I like to see if I encounter something naturally, or serendipitously. I always feel that’s a good barometer of whether something works for me. I never had any desire to be on MySpace, but Instagram is something that makes sense to me. And when it comes to DJing, I mean, CDJs came on the scene in 2001 and I used it for the first time on my 2002 tour. I embraced Serato a few years later, and Ableton a few years after that. When it comes to making music I like to inject a bit of new technology each time, so that I’m constantly having to learn and adjust.
On Purists...
Personally – well, all of my friends who have been DJing for 30, 40 years – whenever these topics come up, we just look at each other and shrug. There’s an overemphasised sentiment about vinyl purism and to me – and I think for most DJs, although not to speak for anyone else – we used vinyl because it was the predominant media. Music came out on vinyl for 100+ years, so of course there’s tons of music that exists on vinyl. But there’s tons of music that exists on CD, there’s tons of music that only exists in MP3 form. Why limit yourself? You should be able to play all the music that you wanna play. That was certainly something that became apparent to me in the late 00s – that most of the music I was listening to, or wanted to play, just didn’t exist on vinyl. At that point? Adapt or die.
On the Comforts of Disco...
The only era I really look at for comfort when I’m trying to figure out how to weather the storm is the disco era. In the disco era, a lot of artists were just kind of cruising, and it was like, 'Oh, this is going to last forever.' But then almost overnight, people started to prefer to hear DJs and the records they heard on the radio played exactly as they sounded on the radio, only louder. These jazz artists went from playing 1,200-capacity supper clubs to like, holes in the wall. Only a few figured out how to navigate those waters – it was a huge shake-up at the time. It’s something I like reading about, moments like that, so that I can have a little bit of a bearing on what I’m supposed to be doing now.
On the Concepts Behind The Mountain Will Fall...
Songs going in different directions – that was definitely a concept, going in. I wanted it to feel like songs within songs, because I feel that there’s so many opportunities when it comes to making instrumental music that seem to never really be seized upon. One of them is an arrangement evolving as a song plays. Rather than just build/drop/build/drop… the idea that, okay, you get to this point and then it completely changes. California, Three Ralphs… those are just some examples of songs on the record that do that.
On Collaborating With Run the Jewels...
I’ve been really vocal telling El, privately, how much I’m inspired by what he’s managed to do. It’s not easy to re-contextualise yourself in the way that he has, at his age. I don’t like to get into the agist thing, but after you turn 40 it can be difficult to have a chance to do what he’s managed to achieve. I said many times to him, in text messages or DMs, just like… ‘I wanna say again, man, that it’s so inspiring. Keep it up. Keep doing it. It means so much to people like me.’ He’s not stuck in one place, he’s always looking to the future, and that’s why I really wanted Run the Jewels on that song. I’d made a track that on a certain level is very obviously almost a throwback, but I didn’t want an old school rapper. I didn’t want to steer the track in an old school direction. I wanted to reimagine that mid-‘90s boom bap hip-hop sound, as applied to 2016. For me, it was going to be Run the Jewels or nobody.
On Scratch Tracks and New Breaks...
I was like, I miss scratch tracks, but I don’t want to use 'Ahhh' and 'Freshhh' and all the same sounds that turntablists have been using over and over. Even to this day, when I hear a contemporary sounding track but they’ve got a DJ scratching on it, what they’re scratching on is always the same thing over and over. To me, it’s such an obvious, small step to take: What if the breaks were totally unknown? And all the little phrases and sounds were totally unknown? Wouldn’t that be so fresh?
DJ Shadow plays O2 ABC Glasgow on 20 Jul and Bluedot Festival, Jodrell Bank on 23 Jul. The Mountain Will Fall is out now on Mass Appeal.