MUSIC

Ella Pawlik finds DJ Shadow in thoughtful mood.

DJ Shadow seems confused. Confused and dejected. As if he can’t work out how to finish a puzzle, and all the other kids in the playground are laughing at him. What he’s most vexed about, though, is that they’re all playing with the puzzle too, and having a rum old time. It’s all a bit awkward, and during our chat he seems to be waiting impatiently for the bell to go and break time to be over.

Since starting his music career in 1996 with his jaw-dropping album ‘Endtroducing’, he’s been casually dipping in and out of the international music scene. He’s been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Except it turns out he doesn’t like T-shirts after all. In fact, he seems so disconcerted with these metaphorical symbols of prestige, he would be more likely to go naked in the Arctic, goose-pimpled arms crossed in a stance of onlooker-less rebellion, than wear his T-shirt with pride.

Make no mistake; Joshua Davis seems like a nice man. Articulate, polite and very thoughtful. And given his musical accolades to date, artistically gifted. Aaah yes, he knows his music. Obsessively, compulsively and often begrudgingly. His success of previous years seems less to buoy his spirits than to serve as a thorn in his side. A reminder of how it was. Way back Then. When him and Qbert were boys, men were men, and music was how it should be.

You might not remember ‘Then’ but he can’t forget it. ‘Then’ was, in fact, quite Bristol-based. Having been signed by Mo’ Wax, DJ Shadow became synonymous with the development of instrumental hip-hop, and consequently trip-hop. And pioneering that scene were the likes of Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead. So it turns out, as a city, we have an affinity with Mr Shadow, who wanted to “inject his personality” into America’s hip-hop scene. And thanks to the support from UK-based James Lavelle, this personality first shot out in England. Right around here. Bristol. He remembers it landing: “I have a lot of good memories there. I used to play, back in the DJ Krush days, back in the early 90s, we used to play in this dancehall club... Bristol was always one of those places we’d go to in the Mo’ Wax days and we didn’t have to worry if it was going to be any good. It was always good because Bristol always seemed to be very up on what we were trying to bring to the table.”

Having started his music career at home, all the way over there in sunny Californ.i.a, it seems strange that he found himself representing the alternative sound of the West Country. “I think the fact that I was from the US made it kind of exotic for some people, and made people feel as though, well, actually this is legitimate and something that’s happening, and now we should be paying attention to it because now it seems to be spreading round the globe.”

Of course, it would only be natural to ask an international DJ slash producer slash musician slash downbeat cogitator what his thoughts of our fair city are now: “You know I just think it’s a great town in England.” He acknowledges his answer may have sounded a touch condescending, but says it anyway.

And on the shaky subject of ‘now’, talk turns to his new album, ‘The Less You Know The Better’, and how the name came about. There were, apparently, two reasons behind it – the first being “the mass communication that we all find ourselves distracted by”. Fair dinks, it’s easy to imagine that digging through hours’, years’, eons’ or even light years’ worth of vinyl for That. Perfect. Beat. can become tiresome if you’re being texted every five minutes with reminders to pay your phone bill.

And therein lies the second reason behind the title. The sad one. It takes dedication, passion and deep-rooted love of music to do what DJ Shadow does. ‘Entroducing’ was lauded, if a little inaccurately, as the first album to be made entirely of samples, and each of those samples was searched for, high and low. But what was initially an impressive and innovative method of music-making has now been rendered almost obsolete by the advent of file sharing, downloading and all the loopholes in the world wide web that mean we have access to everything all the time. He explains that “As far as the discipline in what I do, it just doesn’t seem to be respected that much in the way people make music now. And with so much information online, I think a lot of people just assume it’s as easy as snapping your finger.”

You can genuinely sympathise with the guy – in as much as there are people out there who appreciate the old-fashioned ways, who fly the analogue flag with pride, who like a good old-fashioned rummage in a record shop, they are becoming few and far between. He seems resigned to a life of self-inflicted torture, stating with a sigh that: “The process that I use to make the music that I make has never been more painstaking.”

So it seems paradoxical that the man who’s devoted his life to finding out more, searching for more, always looking to expand his knowledge, his music and his samples, is now working towards the paradigm ‘The Less You Know The Better’. He confesses, “I wrote it as a message to myself in my studio log in big black letters and I don’t remember writing it. But it’s just always been there on the first page in my studio log, covering the entire page... I just kept coming back to that page.”

The way we make music is constantly evolving. Yet DJ Shadow is refusing to embrace this change. As if he’s digging his heels in and trying to stop evolution, holding the ape’s hand high in victory. He’s full of contradictions. He doesn’t like music sharing, yet there’s a remix competition (with all stems available) on his website. He hates promo work but is speaking in an interview. If all this was down to publicity, you wonder why he has bothered, as he vocally maintains the fact he doesn’t care what people think of his sound.

For many people, DJ Shadow has created some amazing and inspirational music. He’s dedicated his life to a unique process of music production that makes sampled and live music indistinguishable. One that he has mastered, and on some levels he acknowledges this: “There’s a few songs on the album that are 100% sampled and I think they’re as close as I’ve ever come to realising that really blurred line.”

If only he’d be a bit more proud of what he does. Hold his head high. Realise that the kids in the playground aren’t laughing at him. They’re only asking if he wants to join in. And if he tries hard enough, he might even have some fun. It is playtime after all.

DJ SHADOW PLAYS O2 ACADEMY, BRISTOL ON MON 28 NOV. FFI: HTTP://WWW.O2ACADEMYBRISTOL.CO.UK/EVENT/32801/DJ-SHADOW-TICKETS

Copyright Ella Pawlik 2011