DJ Shadow returns on October 3 with a new album, The Less You Know The Better.
It’s only his fourth LP to date, coming five years after The Outsider and fifteen after his seminal debut, Endtroducing…, released way back in ’96. FACT caught up with the DJ/producer – real name Josh Davis – mid-tour, to talk album guests, drum ‘n bass, internet idiocy and hip-hop fundamentals.
“I felt I needed to free myself from distractions.”
What are you up to at the moment?
“I’m getting ready to release my fourth proper album, The Less You Know The Better, and I’ve been on tour since May.
Tell us about the new album…where does it sit in the grand scheme of DJ Shadow LPs?
“In terms of where it fits in, it stands up really well to the rest of the records. I think it’s a record that a lot of people will like. I haven’t felt that way about every record I’ve made but I do feel with this one, I struck a good balance with making music I was at peace with and making music that my fanbase will like.”
“In terms of the process, I was immersing myself in the work. I secluded myself in a little cabin out on the Sonoma for about four or five days out of the week. Then I’d go back to my wife and kids on the weekend. Then go back to the cabin and wake up and work and spend the night there. It was how I felt I needed to work on this record. I felt I needed to free myself from distractions. And get to a creative zone that’s difficult to get in when you’re working for a few hours at a time.
“I can put a record on that I listened to five years prior and found nothing of interest and then maybe be totally amazed at what I didn’t pay attention to last time. As with any instrument you can be a drummer for your entire life and then you can decide to approach how you do differently and it will lead to new innovations and I think the same is true with sampling. I think as I mature and my understanding of music grows and changes so does my source material in my own eyes.
“You can be a drummer for your entire life and then you can decide to approach how you do differently and it will lead to new innovations and I think the same is true with sampling.”
Are there any guests on this album?
“For most of the album making process I wanted it to be instrumental but around March this year I decided it would be a better album if I relaxed my own rules and got a couple of collaborations on there that were worthwhile. And I wanted to really carefully select who was going to be on there.
“Tom Vek reached out and asked me to do a remix on his recent album and I couldn’t do it but I asked if he could do vocals on ‘Warning Call’. That was the first collaboration. I always knew I wanted to work with Little Dragon at least since 2009 even though I’d met the lead vocalist Yukimi a few years before that. I only wanted to work with people that I felt like were going to be emotionally invested in the process and really try their hardest and give me something good.
“With Tom Vek for example, I told him upfront: ‘Look, I have something specific in mind, are you cool with that?’ Because I wanted to be really honest about every step of this process so I get something I can really stand behind. He totally understood. I was able to be really honest and be like ‘I really like this part’ or ‘can we fix this part?’, ‘let’s try this part over again’, ‘not sure about that lyric’, ‘can we try this?’. And he was also firm about what he thought was valid, so it was a good collab.”
“When I said on Endtroducing… that I’m a student, I don’t feel like that will every really change. I rely on the work of my peers to inform what I do.”
At this mature stage in your career, what would you say are the enduring fundamentals of the Shadow sound and aesthetic? What unites everything you’ve produced?
“I think that the best way to answer that is to go back to the very first record I ever bought, which was ‘The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel’. That aesthetic as a DJ: of taking bits of what’s around you and applying your own personality to it is still what I feel like I do today. That was the road map for me. Through all of my years listening to other DJs and hearing how people put those mixes together and how those people went from being a DJ to making beats and how they put beats together. When I said on Endtroducing… that I’m a student, I don’t feel like that will every really change. I rely on the work of my peers to inform what I do. I put my personality on it and then I kick that back out into the ether and hopefully someone will benefit from it.”
Do you still take the opportunity to dig around stores much these days? Is there much left to plunder ‘in the flesh’ with so much record-trading having transferred into the online world?
“I still do go out and look for records a lot but I don’t really go to stores anymore. Because there really aren’t too many stores in the States in the older way, where there used to be a lot of older rock collectors that just put stuff out and they didn’t research online. If they paid a nickel for the record, they just wanted to get a few dollars out of it and put it out for cheap. That’s all pretty much gone away now and its mostly just boutiques where every record in the store is researched within an inch of its life, priced in some cases higher than it costs on the internet. So I find, unfortunately, that a lot of stores are a waste of time but I do go to a lot of thrift stores.
“In the States there is still a thriving thrift store and boot sale culture. You can still find good deals and weird things. I prefer to do my own thing and I don’t pay too much attention to the trends. I am on eBay all the time and I have to be all the time if you want anything in particular but when it comes to actual digging, I just go off and beat my own path.”
“I don’t find the need to define myself based on an avatar or on some sort of persona by which I engage in strange political psycho-babble commentary on some website.”
What are your feelings about the internet world in general?
“A lot of people have come to some conclusion: that I’m a Luddite and I hate technology. All of which is absurd, I’m on the computer 10 hours a day as it is. I just choose to keep one foot in the plane of reality and the physical world. I don’t find the need to define myself based on an avatar or on some sort of persona by which I engage in strange political psycho-babble commentary on some website or any of that kind of stuff. It’s not really where my head’s at.
How have you evolved your show and approach to performance over the years?
“Every time I go out to tour, it’s an opportunity to make a statement as a DJ. Sometimes the statement is ‘we are going to use 8 turntables and nothing but 45 wax’. Sometimes the statement is – I am gonna use CDJs, sometimes I am going to use Ableton, Serato – whatever the circumstances dictate.”
“People have said lately ‘you’re bringing back drum & bass’ because I play a few of the remixes in my set. And I say ‘what does that mean, it’s never gone away?’.”
What led you to asking Rockwell to remix ‘Def Surround Us’? Are you a drum & bass fan? Or was it something else in his work that appealed to you?
“I’ve always felt aligned with drum & bass. Going all the way back to ‘94 when I first started hearing it coming out of cars as I was walking around London. The obvious connection is ‘wow, they are flipping a breakbeat’. But I was also listening to UK rap and you would hear in tracks like ‘Dett’ by the Demon Boys – British rap was always so fast, that it’s just a minor leap from there to having a slightly more ragga influence and stepping up the tempo another 10 BPM or so.
“I used to tour with Peshay. And he did a remix in 1995 of ‘What Does Your Soul Look Like’. Bad Company did a remix of ’6 Days’. It was sort of an unofficial remix. So I’ve always had these flirtings with the drum & bass community. And I’ve gone to clubs a few times for fun to check out the scene and it’s an amazing energy. So, sometimes people have said lately ‘you’re bringing back drum & bass’ because I play a few of the remixes in my set. And I say ‘what does that mean, it’s never gone away?’.
“I am happy in that context that I am playing it, when it isn’t the trendiest remix in the world compared to dubstep and other newer genres.”
“People assume because of the music that I make, where I come from and my roots that I spend a lot of time listening to really cerebral hip hop. But I actually really don’t. I tend to like music that just hits hard.”
Have you been following much of the emergent DIY hip hop that’s making waves at the moment? People like Clams Casino, Odd Future, Lil B…if so what are your thoughts on what they do and where they are coming from?
“I’ve always tried to keep my ears open to all these different incarnations of hip hop. I mean growing up, I bought Two Live Crew’s Throw That Dick’ the same day I bought ‘South Bronx’ by BDP back in ‘86. So I’ve always tried to keep my ears open to new permutations of the genre. Being from California people ask me a lot about this type of thing or that type of thing. A lot of people assume because of the music that I make, where I come from and my roots that I spend a lot of time listening to really cerebral hip hop. But I actually really don’t. I tend to like music that just hits hard. A few years ago everybody was asking me about Gaslamp Killer and that whole scene. There is always some new scene and I usually end up discovering it in my own time and own way.”
What are you listening to at the moment?
“I find these kind of questions hard to answer at the moment because I’ve been living in album world and tour world for at least the last year. And there really isn’t time to go out and explore a bunch of new stuff when you’re working on music 12 or 14 hours a day. I get exposed to certain things in the club scene or here and there.
“Usually I do my exploring just before going into the studio to expose myself to what’s going on. So I started Shadow radio early last year to articulate to people what I am listening to but unfortunately I haven’t had time to do one of those in over a year. Ask me again in a year I am sure I’ll have a bunch of clever answers.”
“I never think beyond the next six months.”
What’s next?
“I was touring after The Outsider and all of a sudden the Hollywood Bowl rang up and asked us to do a mix and next thing you know we did a hard sell and toured that for a year. I always leave my schedule pretty much open, I never think beyond the next 6 months and I know for the next four of those months I am going to be on the road touring The Less You Know The Better.”