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Thought you would like this Jeff. In this weeks Eye Weekly
Extended Play
WITH DENISE BENSON
DJ SHADOW
Thu, Oct 12. Kool Haus, 132 Queens Quay E. $25.50 from Rotate This, Play de Record, Ticketmaster.
The first thing DJ Shadow wants you to know is that he's made the exact album he wanted to make. The Outsider is a departure for the open-eared producer long associated with highly textured, sample-based and very chilled hip-hop instrumentals.
Born Josh Davis, the Bay Area resident helped put the pioneering Mo' Wax label on the map with releases such as 1993's "In/Flux" and 1995's astounding What Does Your Soul Look Like EP. Endtroducing, his gorgeous debut album of 1996, sealed the deal, forever associating Shadow with a specific sound and production approach. No longer. Davis has now sidestepped any pressure to come with more of the same.
"Actually, if you've ever had twin girls be born about six weeks early, then you understand that that's real pressure, and any other thing seems easy by comparison," he deadpans. "With this album, I tried to take myself back to the mentality I had when I was doing Endtroducing, where I didn't have any critical legacy to live up to so I made the exact record I wanted to. I didn't want to start working on this album unless I was willing to risk everything. I threw away the rule book."
This included tossing the cardinal rule he imposed on himself during the making of 2002's The Private Press, which was that every sound had to come from sampled sources. On The Outsider, Davis uses samples but also works with musicians, and brings in a whole host of voices, resulting in an album that traverses hip-hop, rock, indie, pop and more. Contributing rappers range from Q-Tip and Lateef the Truth Speaker to throaty Bay Area guys including the legendary E-40 and current hyphy heavyweights Keak Da Sneak and The Federation. Add to this a searing contribution by Mississippi's David Banner (who lets the Katrina commentary rip on "Seein Thangs") and you've got an album that's diverse by any interpretation.
"There was no point when I was working on this record that I felt like, 'Oh I don't know. This might be going too far,'" Davis insists. "Everything about it was totally natural to me.
"When people say things like 'Why is he hopping on the Bay Area bandwagon?' I don't even know what to say. I started my career working with Bay Area rappers like Paris. The fact that somebody from England [Mo' Wax founder James Lavelle] kind of stepped in and took me on this wild ride of a detour has been nothing short of exhilarating, but at a certain point it was inevitable that I contribute to the movement -- especially now that the Bay Area has kind of got itself together again after Tupac's murder and everything."
Though I don't love every song on The Outsider, I appreciate Davis' versatility and growth as a songwriter. He's always been able to weave disparate bits of sound into exciting and surprising tracks; here, he develops core song ideas and lets the album speak as a whole.
"I think one of the main things that has stuck in people's throats a little bit is that I didn't want to mix all of the genres together à la The Gorillaz or Gnarls Barkley," Davis explains. "But I kind of feel like we did that on [the 1998 project] UNKLE and I think the Mo' Wax model helped to bring about that whole cross-pollination. Now, 10 years later, I feel like if I'm going to do a hyphy song, I want it to hit the hyphy community; I don't want it just to hit the same narrow band of fans who are accepting of all different things."
For the record, this approach has garnered DJ Shadow his first-ever commercial radio airplay, with "3 Freaks" becoming a hyphy hit on the west coast.
"That affected me the same way it would affect some 16-year-old kid in a rock band," laughs Davis. "When you drive around and you hear yourself on the radio, it makes you want to go back in the studio and be like 'OK, well if you liked that one, check this!'"
Here is the link 
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_...xtendedplay.php
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Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.
- H. P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937)
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