In the fourteen years since DJ Shadow released his landmark debut album, the 100% sample-based, instrumental hip-hop masterpiece Endtroducing....., the Northern Cali DJ/producer/composer born Josh Davis, who started out as a hip-hop radio DJ on KDVS in Davis, has never stopped evolving musically. In fact, he has been so musically adventurous that he even alienated some initial fans of his who expected him to continue making the same type of music as he did on Entroducing.... over and over again. But rather than take the easy path, DJ Shadow has continually & bravely crafted new sounds and styles with each step of his career. For example, his foray into hyphy with 2006's wonderful The Outsider (for which he had a memorable Amoeba SF instore) drew some disappointed critiques and upset some fans. But for DJ Shadow, this is all part of being an artist who refuses to rest on his creative laurels. 


Those true DJ Shadow fans, who have stuck with him through every turn, can appreciate him for what he is: an always growing musical creator whose every step in his artistic growth is decidedly interrelated. Fittingly, his next album, Shadowsphere, which is expected to be released in mid 2011, will be a continuation of the past two decades of music making by this gifted producer. After several months of holing himself up in his Mill Valley, California studio recording Shadowsphere, the artist decided to take a break mid-way through the project by going out on the appropriately titled Shadowsphere tour. 

This most unique tour featured video and visual effects by the Chicago-born/San Francisco based video artist/musician Ben Stokes (Tino Corps/Meat Beat Manifesto, etc), who has collaborated with Shadow in a similar capacity on several previous tours. The Shadowsphere tour, which included over 50 dates, started in Europe back in the summer and has wound its way back through select cities in Canada and America over the past couple of months, ending last week, the night before Thanksgiving, with the final date in Salt Lake City. A week earlier I caught the Shadowsphere show at the Fillmore East @ Irving Plaza, one of the two NYC area shows, and around the same time had a chance to talk with the Bay Area artist about the tour, the forthcoming album, his career, legendary record collection, preferred studio gear of late, and his views on digital music downloading.


Amoeblog: How has the tour been?

DJ Shadow: It's been really good. It started out in Europe and we've been playing all kinds of big festivals in Eastern Europe and Western Europe, and places like Russia and a lot of places I had never been to before like Poland and Hungary and Finland and sharing the stage with all kinds of big rock and pop acts. We just wanted to put a show together that, even if people didn't know who I was or know my music that well, they would leave going, 'Yeah I like this group and that group and this one guy, he had this crazy set up and [I] really dug the music and stuff.' So that's the context that we try to put the show together.

Amoeblog: Can you describe the Shadowsphere set up for people who have never seen it?

DJ Shadow: Basically I am inside of a sphere that we built and designed back in San Francisco and we project on it. And, of course, it's three dimensional because the sphere has depth. So it takes two projectors to project onto that and there's a back screen behind. It's almost like the sphere is a planet and the back screen is space, if you want to think of it in that way. So there's two completely different sets of visuals. So we kind of play with that. And I can also turn and face the audience as well. I am not completely hidden at all times. And there's cameras inside to show what I'm doing so it's not like I'm hidden in any way. But it's just something completely different. There's no amount of clips on YouTube that can really do it justice. You've got to see it.

Amoeblog: And obviously the Shadowsphere tour is a precursor to the Shadowsphere album, right?

DJ Shadow: Well, I was in the studio from December of last year til about May or June of this year and then we launched right into this tour. We booked this tour around February or March because I knew that by the time the summer came around I would be a little bit tapped out creatively in the studio, which happens after a while when you are in there like twelve hours a day. You don't want to force anything and you don't want to be in there working just because you feel obligated to be. So once I felt like I had done a good chunk of work, and I'm about halfway done with the record, I went on the tour and I will soon be back in the studio and hopefully the record will be out in the summer of next year.

I kind of considered this [tour] to be one of those between albums tours that rock groups do where they're rehearsing new material and they kind of want to try it out on an audience and go back and retool it. So a lot of the material I've been playing on the tour is only half finished. I was able to weave it into the show so it is mixed with other stuff and it feels right. I always want the music to be contemporary, and the last thing I ever want to do is feel like is an oldies review -- you know, doing songs from Entroducing... exactly as they sound on the record. And so I worked really hard on making the music kind of forward looking as well as touching on some of the songs that people expected to hear.


Amoeblog: I really like that new Shadowsphere track "Def Surrounds Us."

DJ Shadow: Yeah that track is a little bit inspired by... a fondness and a longing for some of the minimal 85/86 Def Jam drum machine kind of sound but then again, [it's] sort of influenced by some of the post-grime music coming out of the UK.

Amoeblog: What recording gear or programs are you using for this new album?

DJ Shadow: Well, it's really been totally stripped back to the simplest terms and that's really the way I prefer to work: a turntable, a sampler -- that's pretty much it. I wouldn't be doing that if I felt like there wasn't so much to be done that hasn't been done. I do use things like Maschine, which is a Native Instruments program for like a virtual MPC. I don't use an MPC [traditional sampler] anymore because I just don't find it to be..eh...there's too many limitations I find in the age that we live in. So that is an example of where I have gone, 'okay it doesn't make sense to hold onto an aesthetic that's hopelessly outdated now.' Now sampling in itself, to me, is a discipline and a language that is endless.

Amoeblog: You're a noted crate digger and I've read in different places that your collection ranges from something like 60,000 to 100,000 records. So what size exactly is your collection? Do you know?

DJ Shadow: It's really hard to say.

Amoeblog: Okay, well let me ask you this: Due to its depth and size, I know that your vast record collection is spread around & stored in different places. So do you know where every record is if you need to get it?

DJ Shadow: Well, anything that is hip-hop I have all in one place. And anything this is a 12" or an LP format that is not hip-hop is in another place. And then the 45's that are immediately important to me, they are kind of in one place. The bad news, though, is that if I need to pull specifically something like, say, a Downtown Science album, the hip-hop is not organized so it could take over a day to find that record, I suppose.

Amoeblog: Any upcoming collaborative projects with Cut Chemist planned?

DJ Shadow: I think it's always possible. We've known each other a long time and it's kind of like Quannum and Solesides, where even if you don't talk to each other for six months you kind of know where you're at and it's a family thing. So in that context, anything is possible.

Amoeblog: How do you feel about the ease with which people get music, often for free, in this digital age?

DJ Shadow: On one hand, I feel like it is pointless for someone like me to try to hold back time or progress or say that maybe things are moving too fast. But on another level, I sometimes feel like, well, I am being asked and the opinion is that I don't think that everything that the digital age has brought us has been good for music. We've been advertised at to death to the point of like '5 million songs' or '10 million songs' and it's just this abstract number that doesn't really mean anything to anybody. And the bottom line is, you go hear most DJs play and they're still playing the same 30 songs that you expect them to play. So it's not like it's made DJs any more adventurous. It's more like 'ok here's the hits that you expect me to play and I'm going to give them to you.' Of course, there are exceptions to that rule, but a lot of times I think the people that are digging for lost music in that way are still using the physical domain to do so.

--------------

For updates on all things DJ Shadow, visit the official DJ Shadow website.