Article13th July, 2024 / music
DJ Shadow
The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Gateshead. Having recently rediscovered a radio edit of his epic Rock City gig twenty-two years ago, I was eager to see him again.
I was a big fan of DJ Shadow between 1996 and 2006. Endtroducing was the gateway, and I love the 1998 compilation Preemptive Strike, 2002’s The Private Press and 2006’s The Outsider. I also adored UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction and the Product Placement collaboration with Cut Chemist. And then there’s the Solesides and Quannum West Coast hip-hop stuff. I love it all.
But then I drifted away. I didn’t pay much attention to the following albums and didn’t connect to last year’s synthy 80s Action Adventure.
I first saw Shadow live in Nottingham in 2002, part of a BBC Radio 1 week of shows, and it was an incredible experience. Two thousand people crammed into Rock City. He spent the first few minutes explaining all his equipment, which was genuinely riveting. Then he played for two hours. And then he did a 40-minute encore. I recently found a BBC Radio 1 edit of the show via a Discogs comment, and it’s put a fire back under my appreciation for Shadow’s early work. I mentioned this on Mastodon and shared the show via Dropbox, and was surprised how many people thanked me.
Here’s something I wrote for my Designer Discs interview a few years ago, when I chose Midnight in a Perfect World as one of five songs that mean a lot to me.
Endtroducing is in my top five albums forever, and it’s linked me to all sorts of Bay Area hip-hop and stuff. You imagine him getting to know all these strange tracks and albums for years, working out how to fit them together and then bang; this album comes out, and it’s like Dark Side of the Moon with decks. Other people can do this technically, but few conjure up these dense moods and dark feelings —some tracks on Endtroducing feel pretty strange.
Shadow returned to Rock City on this tour, but we knew we’d be up North and so we grabbed tickets for The Glasshouse in Gateshead. I hadn’t been in the building since 2010 when it was called The Sage and I spoke at the excellent DIBI conference. It’s still a fab and welcoming venue, and I wish we had something like it here.
I won’t review the show at length as it’s not easy, and I’m tired. But I’ll leave a few notes.
I remember that in 2002, he was crate-digging like crazy, working across two Technics 1200s, two CDJ turntables and banging an MPC sampler non-stop. The set was based around complete or more clearly discernable songs and included a lot of Gift of Gab, Blackalicious, etc. Tonight’s show was very different, a denser, more complex and fragmented assemblage of hard-hitting tracks and collaborations from across his thirty-year career. I was too far from the stage (lovely box seat, though) to see the equipment, but the setup seemed way more straightforward, probably reliant on CD backing tracks, allowing for almost continuous scratching. He did make samples from a mini drum kit, though. Oh, and the visuals were constant and tightly tied to the sound, often leaning on music videos. I’d have loved to hear more recognisable passages from those early albums and I think the set needed a few more spacious and spooky moments, but I’m not complaining — the overall show was superb.
It was an interesting audience: many people my age with their partners, many baseball caps, and quite a few younger folks. It was a seated gig, save for a small standing area below the stage, and it took a while for the room to warm up. But when it did, it was electric. A few brave souls left their seats to get moving, and soon everyone jumped to their feet. Towards the end of the set, he’d whipped everyone into a frenzy and the atmosphere was incredible. I can still feel the vibrations.
I can’t post a setlist as it wasn’t that kind of gig and TBH, I think it’d be near-impossible for anyone except Shadow to compile. That said, the visuals helpfully referenced many tracks, and I’ve expanded my DJ Shadow playlist.
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