The Shadow Lightens Up

06/06/2002 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy

Folks threw a lot of adjectives around trying to describe DJ Shadow's 1996 cut-and-paste masterpiece, Endtroducing. Hypnotic. Haunting. Brooding. Ethereal.

One definition that never got tossed onto the pile was "fun-loving." But that's a side of himself Shadow decided he should share on The Private Press, the long-awaited follow up to his massively influential debut.

"The first few months of working on the record, I felt like I had some good demos, but a lot of them were pretty dark and downtempo, and I started thinking, 'Wait a minute--that's not all I'm feeling today,'" explains Shadow, aka 28-year-old Josh Davis. "I wanted to make sure I represented my personality as a whole, because I like albums that reflect a wide range of moods."

That means fans of Endtroducing's somber breakbeat symphonies will still find plenty to embrace on The Private Press, like "Blood On The Motorway" and the Massive Attack-style "The 6 Day War." But they may be surprised by "Right Thing/GDMFSOB," a wacky piece of electro built around a British voice repeating the title phrase, or "Mashin' On The Motorway," on which Shadow's instrumental flow is interrupted by MC guest Lateef and the sounds of pissed-off drivers.

"A song like 'Right Thing'--yeah, I wanna make people smile," admits Shadow. "It's kind of goofy."

Even though that lighter side didn't get much exposure on Endtroducing--an album that catapulted Shadow from obscurity in Northern California to the vanguard of international DJs--he's actually spent some of the past six years displaying it, on a pair of funny, funky mix collaborations with fellow record-spinner Cut Chemist.

But he also used the time between albums to explore more familiar, moodier territory, working with Radiohead's Thom Yorke and ex-Verve singer Richard Ashcroft on the all-star Unkle project, and providing the soundtrack to Dark Days, a documentary about homeless people living underground in New York.

Something Shadow didn't spend much time doing was investigating the work of the many cut-and-paste artists that surfaced in the wake of Endtroducing. "People would say, 'Hey, this sounds like you,' and I'd think, "I sure hope not!'" he says, laughing.

One of the ways he's asserted his individuality is by reassembling breakbeats into "histrionic, frenzied" drum patterns that are incredibly realistic. It's a skill he demonstrates on the new album, on the percussive showcase "Giving Up The Ghost."

"That was probably the only song where I sat down and said, 'I really want to top myself,'" he reveals. "At the same I time, I knew that's what a lot of people expected me to do, so I didn't wanna do it on a lot of different songs."

Instead, Shadow found other ways to stay creative. On "Monosyllabic," he forced himself to create an entire tune from a single two-bar loop. "By the end of it, I had to go to great lengths to create some kind of new texture," he recalls. "But I needed something to kickstart the record, and that did it."

As DJing has exploded in popularity, longtime vinylhounds like Shadow now find lots of competition for rare records. He's compensated by diving deeper and deeper into the obscure--like the untitled no-wave single from 1982 that forms the backbone of "Blood On The Motorway."

"Written on the jacket, all it says is, 'Number 321 of 500.' So in trying to clear the sample, we were having a hard time finding the guy," says Shadow with a laugh. "In general, I like to use records that are off the beaten path--but I really tried to up the ante this time!"