From: "Chris.Hilker" <cspot@hyperreal.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 23:52:48 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (idm) DJ Shadow article from SF Weekly
The Laws of Entropy
Davis' DJ Shadow breaks it down
By James Sullivan
>From the 'SF Weekly,' Vol 14 #52, 7 Feb 1996
Fifteen years after rap's initial breakthrough, a second wave of
international DJs has capsized the tired notion that samplers are not
musicians. Tape-and-vinyl manipulators are now considered creators in their
own right, and that sea change is borne out in the person of DJ Shadow, an
aural-collage artist hailing from the unlikely hometown of Davis, Calif.
To this 23-year-old b-boy, sampling techniques are steeped in as much
tradition as any other musical form. Adding live instrumentation to a
sampler's craft, Shadow says, is "cheating." Anything a soloist can do,
someone's already done, and done it better. "If you can't find it on a
record, keep looking," he says. "Because it's out there somewhere."
Often described as "deconstructionist hip-hop," Shadow's spoken-word
assemblages, lush, jazzy, interludes, and instrumental breakdowns have made
regular splashes in the underground since he began releasing them in 1992,
as a UC Davis undergrad. Three of his works - the singles "In Flux" and
"Lost and Found (S.F.L.)" and the EP 'What Does Your Soul Look Like?' (all
on London's Mo'Wax label) - met with great fanfare in the U.K. Last April,
'Soul' topped 'Melody Maker's' singles chart, suggesting that Shadow's
complex vision has a potentially broad appeal.
Here in America, Shadow is a founding partner in the East Bay's tiny
SoleSides label, an artists' collective established at Davis. In addition
to Shadow, SoleSides artists like Blackalicious and Lyrics Born have been
recognized in the hip-hop press as promising newcomers.
Even in semirural Davis, KDVS college radio disc jockey Jeff Chang
recognized a miniscule but devoted hip-hop community and proposed that its
members pool their talents. SoleSides' first release was a 12-inch extended
single pairing Shadow's 17-minute state-of-the-hip-hop address, "Entropy"
(also featuring the noirish "DJ Shadow's Theme"), with two versions of
"Send Them" by Asia (now Lyrics) Born. Shadow, aka Josh Davis, says that
the crew's mixed-race makeup and its decidedly rural backdrop was never an
issue.
"I've always acknowledged that hip-hop didn't start in Davis, know what I
mean?" he says quietly, nibbling on nachos in a Ninth Avenue taqueria, just
down the block from his recording studio. "Hip-hop started in New York. But
it quickly spread to the rest of the world, and then by about 1987, '88, it
no longer mattered where it came from.
"There were real b-boys in Japan, real b-boys in Denmark, real b-boys in
Australia," he continues. "An there were very few people who were confused
about where it started... I know exactly where I fit in."
Around the time of the SoleSides' inception, Shadow was recording for
Hollywood Basic, for whom he turned a remix of a song by Zimbabwe Legit
into a musing on the appropriation of African music. "There was a track I
did before that," he explains, "on a demo for this rapper named T-Mor, out
of Hunters Point. It was entirely spoken word, with little beat drop-ins.
It was that track and Zimbabwe Legit ["Legitimate Mix"] where I felt I had
a voice that was saying something different."
Though Shadow's raw breakbeat collages and his obvious fascination with
sonic textures share a certain sensibility with the currently voguish
"trip-hop" movement (Portishead, Tricky), he downplays any interest in the
genre, likewise acid jazz. "I have no affinity for taking a break[beat] and
having someone play sax over it," he says. "I think my productions are a
kind of reaction to the tepid sound that a lot of the acid-jazzy stuff is
bringing to the table."
In adherance to his self-imposed ground rules, Shadow divides his work
roughly down the middle, offsetting the "hardcore" hip-hop grooves he's
done for SoleSides with more experimental "non-rap" sides for Mo'Wax. He
says that Mo'Wax President James Lavelle recognized that the open-ended
possibilities of Shadow's "left-field" material immediately upon hearing
"Legitimate Mix." "He definitely saw something heading away from the status
quo of what hip-hop was at the time," Shadow says.
Recently, Shadow collaborated with his Japanese doppelganger, DJ Krush, on
the latter's 'Meiso;' Shadow's forthcoming remix of the title track
features vocals by the Roots. Later this spring, Mo'Wax will release
Shadow's own full-length debut, 'Endtroducing.' Though he says 'What Does
Your Soul Look Like?' could have been his debut album, it was released as a
32-minute single/EP. "I like buying long singles, too," he says, "but I
don't want people to get the impression that somehow I don't have an album
in me."
In publicity photos, Shadow invariably appears covering his face with his
hands, or hiding beneath a baseball cap. He sees himself as a
behind-the-scenes operator, one whose identity doesn't matter so much as
the product he turns out. The name "Shadow" is meant as a tribute to the
producers and engineers who remain his heroes. At the outset of his career,
Shadow says he was "really irritated at the egos in hip-hop... I wanted a
name that signified that it doesn't matter who's doing it." Comparing music
with filmmaking - an apt analogy, given the grainy cinematic quality of his
compositions - Shadow says that he identifies more with directors than
on-screen stars, "because it's their vision."
As a child, Shadow was already preoccupied by pulling things out of
context. "I used to cut out little heads from magazines and 'TV Guide' and
put them on other bodies," he says. Given a turntable at age 3 and piano
lessons at 8, he quickly saw the same could be done with sound and music.
"I was always intrigued by sound effects. I used to walk around with a tape
recorder, recording TV shows and making little edits. I have probably 200
tapes of, like, 'The Super Friends.'"
Like many young hip-hoppers, Shadow points to songs like Blondie's
"Rapture" (1980) and Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" (1982) as early
inspirations. "The first record I ever bought was by Devo," he says. "Even
then I liked synthesizers.... But what really hit me was when I heard
[Grandmaster Flash's] 'The Message.' That's when I knew that there was a
much more powerful form of communicating, which was rapping."
Today, Shadow's vinyl collection includes everything from country to
gospel, an eclecticism that snakes its way into his music. "I like to buy
whatever's not in vogue," he says. "If everybody's all of a sudden onto
Brazilian records, I won't touch them. Or if everybody's onto exotica, of
'the weird shit,' then I'll start buying straight-up soul."
All but anonymous in America, Shadow hasn't succumbed to the hype he's
received overseas. "I've had a carreer full of [being called] 'the next big
thing,'" he laughs. "I've been called the next big thing for the last six
years by different people, different communities... If I can just keep
being the next big thing for the next 15 years, I'll be fine."