DJ Shadow celebrates his new album, Our Pathetic Age (out 11/15 on
Mass Appeal Records) with a signing at Amoeba Hollywood. To attend: -
Purchase your copy of Our Pathetic Age at Amoeba Hollywood beginning
November 15th to attend this special event. - DJ Shadow will sign
copies of the new album only - 1 or 2 copies per person. - In-store
purchases only - no online/phone orders. Our Pathetic Age represents
an intensely creative period for the pioneering musician, and his most
ambitious work yet. The first album is all DJ Shadow, 11 original,
instrumental tracks that include his deepest dive yet into original
composition and his first fully orchestrated piece of music. The
second half is a full album of vocal collaborations, ranging from Run
The Jewels, Nas and Dave East to Samuel T. Herring, Paul Banks and
Wiki, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, and Brooklyn MC
Stro. Shadow also reunited with his early Solesides collaborators
Lateef The Truthseeker and Gift of Gab (Blackalicious), and partnered
with fellow Bay Area musicians Fantastic Negrito and Jumbo is Dr.ama.
We live in uncertain times. Old worlds are shifting out of sync, new
worlds are mired in confusion and to make matters worse, Superman
appears to have taken early retirement. Thank the Lord for the return
of DJ Shadow. Enter Mr. Josh Davis with a new, expansive,
double-album: Our Pathetic Age. “Occasionally an artist feels a
responsibility to hold a mirror up to society and reflect on, or try
to interpret their surroundings,” says Shadow. “Prince did it with
Sign O’ The Times; Sly (and The Family Stone) did it with There’s
A Riot Going On. I don’t consider either of them to be political
artists per se, but they were compelled to use their art to help them
comprehend their time. Similarly, despite the title, I don’t
consider this to be a political album, but rather, a humanistic one.
Whatever your political viewpoint, as human beings inhabiting planet
earth, there’s a lot we’re going to have to answer for.” Spread
lavishly over 26 songs, with the instrumentals separated away from the
vocal tracks, this is Shadow ploughing a unique furrow that still
carries with it his recognizable hip-hop aesthetic. “For most of my
recent albums, I blended the vocal tracks and instrumental tracks
together. It was an intentional provocation, I didn’t want to spare
anyone either end of the spectrum,” says Shadow. “You like the
more ethereal instrumental stuff? Well, you’re gonna get hardcore
rap mixed in. You like the rap stuff? Cool, in the meantime, chew on
this female folk track. I liked mixing those energies and forcing
people to challenge and define their boundaries. But this time,
allowing the instrumentals to breathe on their own seemed refreshing,
I felt free to be as progressive and ‘out-there’ as I wanted. I
didn’t need to zig-zag between vibes, the vocal stuff could exist
without compromise. And, by treating the album as two suites of music,
it strengthened and eventually define the double-album concept.” DJ
Shadow made his name back in the 1990s as the mercurial producer of
the vaunted Endtroducing, as well as aiding in the revival of numerous
undeservedly forgotten auteurs like David Axelrod. His exploits as a
digger are almost as legendary as his productions (these two facets of
his personality, in fact, working side-by-side) with a series of
compilations that took vinyl scavenging to a whole new level. He’s
the DJ’s DJ. After releasing early productions on his own Solesides
label, Shadow was signed to the influential UK label Mo’ Wax. The
pairing would result in Shadow’s de facto second album,
U.N.K.L.E.’s Psyence Fiction, which found the producer alongside
contemporaries like Thom Yorke and the Beastie’s Mike D.
Subsequently, DJ Shadow has released four further solo albums,
including the acclaimed The Private Press, 2011’s The Less You Know,
The Better, the adventurous The Outsider and The Mountain Will Fall,
which included his biggest success so far, “Nobody Speak,”
featuring Run The Jewels. Although the track did include a familiar
sample-based aesthetic, there was so much more to it than that,
vindication of the left-turn he made on the last album. “The basis
of it is a sample, and in the old days, that would have been it. Now I
understand better how to really cover the full frequency range, adding
textures and enhancement underneath every kick and snare so that the
production feels full and complete. There's deep bass and there's
crisp highs, which was always an issue working with just samples.”
His studio existence has regularly been disrupted and energized by
tours that have showcased his quiet showmanship, as on his Live From
The Shadowsphere tour, described by Beatport as one of the top ten DJ
shows ever. In 2014, he once again teamed up with Cut Chemist (the
pair made DJ delights Brainfreeze and Product Placement together) to
create a live set entirely constructed out of Afrika Bambaataa’s
mammoth record collection to a joyous reception, while in 2016 a 20th
anniversary edition of his seminal Endtroducing album was re-issued
(predictably, it’s already become a collectors’ item). Now
considered one of the elder statesmen of this scene, Shadow’s
maturity is evident in both his approach to music-making and an
increasingly sagacious view of the world in which we live. “I think
as you age, you view the world, and your place within it, a bit
differently,” he explains. “I used to be starved for validation
from my peers, my hip-hop heroes. I don’t really possess that desire
for recognition anymore. I feel fortunate to still have an outlet for
my music, and over time, history will judge if I’ve been successful
in my endeavors or not. At the same time, I feel I know my strengths
and weaknesses better now. I know who I am, and I'm just going to make
work that's 100% me and 100% authentic.”
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21/11/2019 Last update