Josh Davis — best known by his professional moniker DJ Shadow — has been an icon in instrumental hip-hop and composition for more 30 years. Last October, DJ Shadow released his eighth solo album, Action Adventure.

When his tour in support of the new album brought him to First Avenue in Minneapolis, DJ Shadow took the time to visit The Current, where he spoke with host Ayisha Jaffer about his passion for collecting certain cultural artifacts — and how two such lucky purchases in that vein inspired both the sound and the look of Action Adventure.

Listen to the interview using the audio player above, and read a complete transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Edited for time and clarity.

Ayisha Jaffer: I really appreciate you being here. I mean, you're just such a historic figure from the '90s to now, you know, and such an influence. So thanks for being here.

DJ Shadow: Yeah, thank you.

Ayisha Jaffer: So you have this new album out called Action Adventure, and my brain immediately goes to Last Action Hero for some reason. And so I'm wondering, is there a cinematic influence on this album?

DJ Shadow: I think just acknowledging and maybe allowing some of my foundational influences to make their way in. During COVID, an older friend of mine gifted me about 15,000 comic books. Now, when I was a kid growing up, I was a collector of everything: I collected baseball cards, I collected Star Wars cards, and all that; I was a big video game freak at arcades and all that; I was into science fiction movies, and I was into comics. All of that kind of went by the wayside starting around age 13, because I started having a paper route and having to really decide, "OK, what do I want to spend my money on?" And I decided pretty much right away that I wanted to spend my money on records. So all those other things went by the wayside.

And I really never looked back, especially with stuff like comic books, I was like, yeah, this was great and fun, but it just no longer seemed relevant to me. But once I was gifted all these comics, I kind of found myself not getting into like, I'm not really into like the contemporary movies and all that kind of stuff, all the superhero stuff. I more got into the artwork and the figures behind the scenes again. So really more just studying the history and learning about this scene, which is now something that we all take for granted every day.

I mean, I feel like so many aspects of my youth culture that I really reveled in — and not every kid did; I mean, for example, when I was in junior high, there was really only one other kid, maybe two or three, that listened to rap beyond it being a fad. Because you know, when the all the movies were coming out, like Breakin' and Beat Street, it was a fad for like a year in the suburbs. But some of us, a very few of us, were into it on a much deeper level, like a cultural level, and just not that many kids were.

And similarly with comics; it's like, it wasn't something they kind of poured themselves into. And I think I was just that kind of a kid. So to me, Action Adventure is a record that's kind of very personal in that respect, because the artwork is something that is directly derived from me rediscovering my passion for comics and the artwork behind it and getting into, you know, owning original artwork and stuff like that. So, between that and my commentary on, you know, sound design and how, in some respects, I think about music in terms of the way special effects and special sound effects for all those pivotal movies of the '70s and '80s were made, is a really DIY way of doing things back then. So again, without being too sort of backward facing, because I always like to keep at least one foot looking forward, I think that that's what kind of gave the album its combination of influences and the way it feels the way it does.

Ayisha Jaffer: Well, I want to talk about the artwork, actually, if you can describe it for our listeners, and then talk about — I know you've been are collecting a little more — is this comic book-influenced piece of art that you have?

DJ Shadow: No. So it's a painting. It's a very realistic looking painting. It's not stylized, it's designed to look as real as possible. It was, I think, originally for a paperback, like an action paperback.

Ayisha Jaffer: Oh, wow.

DJ Shadow: And it was something that I just kind of was — you know, it happens sometimes we're like, "Oh, that's kind of cool artwork." It's like really good. And there's something that's speaking to me about it. So I kind of put a nominal bid on it, not expecting to win it, and then I won it.

Ayisha Jaffer: Nice!

DJ Shadow: So then I was, you know, it was just in my house. And as I was working on the album, I started imagining: What if this was kind of an amalgam of like, a bunch of different soundtracks that I was creating music for? Because at a certain point, I decided I definitely wanted the album to be instrumental and not have vocal features. I had done that two albums in a row, and I felt like that's what was expected of me to do, and I tend to be a little contrarian and go the other way. Once I had the title, Action Adventure, I started thinking about the artwork a little bit because that's a part of the artistic process that I like to be involved in. And I usually come up with, if not the idea, then like a sketch or something, and then have somebody execute it. But in this case, I thought, "Well, I don't really want a photo; I don't really want this, I don't want that." And I just kept looking at that painting. So I kind of went, "Wow, I might have the artwork already." And that's how it turned out.

Ayisha Jaffer: And I feel like it fits very well.

DJ Shadow: Yeah, I do, too.

Ayisha Jaffer: You're listening to The Current, we're talking to DJ Shadow. So I know you've said in the in other interviews that for a while, music, you weren't listening to it, because you didn't want to imprint this negative kind of connotation to your music. But it was this sale of 200 cassette tapes at an old radio station that kind of brought you back. What was it about that particular sale that you saw, you were like, "I have to bid on this, I have to get this"?

DJ Shadow: Well, I have to give credit to a friend of mine who was just perusing eBay. And he sent me an email, it just said, "If anybody should have these, it's you." And I clicked on it, and you could just tell it was somebody who the tapes meant a lot to them at a certain point in their life. But they were downsizing, and "they've got to go and I hope they find a good home," basically was what was written. They mentioned that they included a lot of mixes on a radio station I wasn't familiar with in Baltimore. I think the minimum bid was like $49. And I just kind of went, "OK, if I win it, I'm meant to win it; if I don't, no great big deal." And I ended up winning it; similar kind of story [as the painting that became the album cover artwork].

And again, to return to some of the context that you had established, yeah, I mean, everybody dealt with COVID, how they dealt with it. And I have two children that were in high school at the time, so navigating everybody's new reality was a lot as a parent and as a recording artist and everything else. It was the first time in about a year and a half that I heard something that just got me excited and made me smile, because I really didn't want to listen to new music for some reason. I just felt like anything new that I listened to in that era was somehow tainted with this awfulness. And I wouldn't ordinarily advocate for kind of leaning on nostalgia. It's something I'm always a little wary of. It was the only thing that brought me back to the joy of what I love about music, which is just this, you know, when you hear something that you get so excited about that you just start kind of jumping around your room or rolling your window down on your car, and just kind of like, "This is amazing."

And it really had everything to do with the youthful enthusiasm that these DJs put into the mixes. It was way different than what I grew up with on the West Coast. We had incredible DJs there, and there were incredible DJs in New York. But this was just a really different take with a lot of different music that you wouldn't have heard in New York or on the West Coast. And it just was awesome. And it just inspired something in me. Was there a favorite like discovery or rediscovery when you were listening? It sounds like you kind of like, it brought you off your feet.  A lot. Well, the DJs that made the mixes ended up having careers — long careers, some of them. And what they were really good at was these kind of mega medleys. And they used a lot of tape edits, and just a lot of production value and a really keen ear for, "This works," like, "This sounds good. These belong together."

Ayisha Jaffer: Yeah.

DJ Shadow: And it's inspiring because again, these mixes in these DJs are not sort of celebrated online or in the storybook of hip-hop the way certain other DJs are in other regions.

Ayisha Jaffer: You're listening to The Current we're talking to DJ Shadow. So one of the songs we're playing on The Current is — I hear one of your favorites to make — "You Played Me." We're thrashing that song, and I'm wondering, what is it about that song that makes it your favorite?

DJ Shadow: I've always kind of said that, when you make music, you start at zero, and there's 10,000 decisions you need to make by the time you complete it. And if you're able to get to the finish line making, you know, the most amount of correct decisions possible, the song is going to be good. But you know, just being realistic, it's a hard thing to measure up to, it's a hard thing to execute. So I definitely don't think I've ever, you know, hit it 100% But there's some songs in my catalogue that I listened to the day of finishing the mix, and thought, "That's as good as I could have ever done. It's as perfect as I can do." "Six Days" was like that. And on this album, "You Played Me," like, I listen to it now, and that's what's fun sometimes is when you give your music distance and then you return to it and you evaluate it with kind of 100% truthfulness in your heart, kind of like, "OK, could I have done better? Is the mix right?" And when I hear that song, I'm always pleasantly surprised. It's like, no, I wouldn't change anything. I don't know how perfect it is, but it's as good as I could have gotten it.

Ayisha Jaffer: I have a curious question: Has anyone from the past of this Baltimore radio station reached out to you?

DJ Shadow: I don't know. I don't know. I mean, they ended up forming a group called Numarx, and they wrote a song called "Girl You Know It's True," which was like a regional D.C. area hit that ended up being covered by a group in Europe and became that Milli Vanilli song, "Girl You Know It's True." So they got super paid off of that.

Ayisha Jaffer: Yeah.

DJ Shadow: And a couple of the guys ended up having, you know, long and I think still enduring careers. DJ Spin, for example, one of the guys who did these mixes, is still a DJ in the Baltimore area, still doing it, as far as I know. And I think it would maybe be different if it was a truly unsung crew, but they did get their flowers in several ways, yeah.

Ayisha Jaffer: Absolutely.

DJ Shadow: Yeah.

Ayisha Jaffer: Was there anything else you want our listeners to know before I let you go?

DJ Shadow: Just that I appreciate being here, and yeah, I love coming here. I've probably been coming out here now since about '97 or so, doing shows and everything, and it's always been a really good time. And yeah, First Avenue is a classic, great place to play, so I'm excited.

Ayisha Jaffer: Well, DJ Shadow, thanks so much for being here with The Current, and Action Adventure is out now. 

DJ Shadow: Thanks.

External Link

DJ Shadow – official site