#allbasescovered

Guess we got ourselves a dang ol' Pinterest board, too. 😂

DJ Shadow and the spice route

Yes, the unthinkable happened - I bought tix for a DJ set! Never thought I’d do it.

My kind of music requires sweat to produce. Plugging in a laptop then twiddling knobs and pressing headphones to one ear while frowning intelligently does not turn me on. And my boredom threshold is way too low to want the same thing over and over. Electronically-produced music lacks the human element to give light and shade, so I’m done after about 30 seconds. For all the frowning and knob-twiddling that goes on, your average DJ is unable to break up the monotony enough to grab my interest.

But Shadow I wanted to hear. He is a consummate musician. Eveything’s put together so cleverly and precisely … you can tell he agonises over each detail in pursuit of some rare and shining goal. And always exquisitely tasty tones in the drum sounds. I was betting on his musical mastery winning me over.

Arrived in time to catch the last support act. I assumed they’d be the cream of the local crop and I wanted a baseline to compare Shadow against. Dexter didn’t disappoint: he laid down some great grooves. His set was upbeat, it made me want to dance, and I got through it with only a moderate amount of glancing at my watch. For me, that’s a standout DJ effort.

Shadow told us this tour was about being as different as possible from anything he’s done before. He believes he’ll let his fans down if he isn’t constantly evolving. (Knew there was a reason I liked this guy.)

His performance was exactly what you see here. Yamaha drum pad. Pioneer mixing desk. No laptops. No visual effects. Just DJ Shadow’s latest ideas in their rawest form. It was enough to keep the entire crowd captivated.

And yes, me too. I was hooked from the start. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out why, since there was nothing particularly complex about the individual riffs … then gave up and surrendered to the journey.

A voyage of discovery, because for many months he’s been seeking out cool beats to sample, then arranging them for our pleasure. Made me feel I was back in the noble courts of Europe when Marco Polo returned from afar, beaing food no-one had ever heard of, spices no one had ever seen or smelled or tasted. Think about it - in the age of decadence where everything had been seen and done, that would be the ultimate experience.

That’s the great genius of DJ Shadow. He brings you riffs that, by themselves, may not be revolutionary, but puts them together in such a way that it creates something truly surprising and unique. And today, just like in the age of explorers, a genuinely new experience is the ultimate prize.

I guess that’s the goal of all re-mixing, but until now I’d never heard anyone with the skills to pull it off. Like these composite photomosaic pictures - everyone knows the concept, but imagine having the discernment and patience to sift through thousands of photos until you got just the right grading to create images like this eye. I can’t even make an eye look that good when painting with paint, let alone painting with tiny random photos. Sure there are apps that cheat and do digital photomosaics for you, but DJ Shadow picks all his beats by hand, and blends them together with unerring taste.

The individual units of his sound mosaic were quite short, well within my 30 second timeframe. I never had a chance to be bored with a particular piece before it changed in some way, even if it was slight. Maybe the fact that the building blocks were similar in length helped with the subtle transitions and made the overall flow more harmonious. The samples were incredibly varied with some great contrasts - some almost sounded like church music mixed up with African beats. A whole banquet of spices and spice combinations. Plus occasional moments of truly glorious drum tones.