DJ Shadow – Action Adventure Tour
New Century Hall, Manchester
22nd March 2024
After recording the live document of The Mountain Will Fall Tour in what must be his favourite Northern Town, American DJ and record producer DJ Shadow returns to bamboozle us on his latest Tour. MK Bennett writes the words and takes the pictures.
DJ Shadow is the populist turntablist du-jour. Neither Babu nor Flash, but an evolution and amalgamation of. There are many facets and aspects to turntablism but while many are lauded and worshipped for their technical brilliance, few have released and continue to release albums of comparable quality to Shadow. Always moving forward, never standing still waiting for acclaim, he currently inhabits two personas, the musician and the B-Boy, the man who works with Mathew Halsall and the man who refuses to let go of his roots, his integrity, the things that bind a man to his past. Now settled reasonably comfortably between the two (Our Pathetic Age from 2019 has one disc of instrumentals and one of collaborations and is consistently dazzling) his most recent record from 2023, Action Adventure remains remarkably him, to wit, expect what you don’t expect.
It is a brave man or one who knows his audience that comes onstage at Midnight on a Friday in Manchester and proceeds NOT to play Midnight (In A Perfect World), maybe it was too obvious like Slade playing Merry Xmas Everybody in December, and after a few minutes most people had forgotten anyway. Beautifully loud and perfectly live mixed as you would expect, massive drums rattling your head like a car ride through Rick James’ brain and enough low-end bass theory to make the entire room impotent.
There is a setlist, but it’s pretty much in the man’s head, as he seems to decide a decent percentage of the songs, at least how he is going to manipulate them, based on the crowd response, going so far as to ask at one point “Do you want the short set or the long?” and to nobody’s surprise was told he could carry on regardless. The scratching, quick mixing and beat mixing are as peerless as you would expect, and the samples are perfect. Being a DJ of a certain age means he either needs onstage go-go dancers or the financially responsible option, a well-researched and impeccably edited backdrop of videos for specific songs or the lapsed and unlapsed interests of a Seventies kid, square-eyed robots and the like. It is an excellently Americanized aesthetic and one he has mined since his debut, finely honed these days with his Pop Art album covers and approval of every half-cool rapper and rock star still standing.
Fairly unique in live remixing his own songs, as that thing he constructs becomes that thing he deconstructs, he builds songs like a master now, nearly Thirty years in and is completely at ease with his skills, so it’s not just a remix, it’s a restructuring of base/bass elements, a revision. Tonight, the most recognisable songs are naturally the most faithful, in this case, songs with videos attached, Systematic, Rocket Fuel, Nobody Speak with that fantastic opening couplet (“Picture this, I’m a bag of dicks, put me to your lips, I am sick, I will punch a baby bear in his shit…”), not to mention the unprintable line about Trump. The song is a collaboration between Run The Jewels and Shadow, whose need to restrict himself to standard song craft (verse, chorus, verse, horn riff etc.) when collaborating often results in some spectacular work, especially the above. Some distance from his past, he likely wanted to deliberately mark himself apart from that debut, with its uncomfortable level of being noticed, the pressures of making a classic, a death note for some but annoying for others, like Radiohead forcing themselves to play Creep.
Six Days, one of the majestic songs from the follow-up album The Private Press, also in tonight’s set was greeted like a long-lost child, a very popular choice. Tonight may have also included some obscurities and some not-so (it is kind of Shadows tagline) but it remains his brilliance to run his set like a fairground ride, speeding up and slowing down just when you think the rides over. Was that Peshay’s Drum and Bass remix of What Does Your Soul Look Like? Possibly, but either way the smile on the man’s face at the outbreak of the mild spot of Mancunian dancing was certainly genuine.
Like Jackson Pollock, another great American artist, you sense his thought processes are not standard, but run on different frequencies, and different sequences. There is always an unexpected chord or bass run, a drum fill seemingly out of place. It’s the same thing that Madlib or Four Tet do or on a track like Monosylabik Parts 1 & 2, which becomes a sort of lowercase Aphex Twin. It’s just a different way of thinking. Never constricted by technology, but rather made free.
The best part of two hours later, he’s gone, leaving us with Organ Donor and sore feet. In the end, it was as always about the drums. Every Shadow song without drums sounds a little impatient, missing a component. The Funk as ever, remains firmly on the one.
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DJ Shadow’s Website | Facebook | Instagram |
All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
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