Of course, where there’s grit on a Shadow record, beauty lies just around the corner. And, like ‘The Outsider’ (and the records before it), Davis’ newest work also effortlessly morphs from thunderous banger to sounds that render the listener speechless at the sheer beauty of it all. In this case it’s the emotive piano and dreamy, echo-drenched vocals of Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano on ‘Scale It Back’ that will have listeners reaching for the repeat button.

Having said that, Davis hasn’t completely forgotten his hip-hop roots. ‘Stay The Course’ features these two rappers you may have heard of: Talib Kweli and Posdnuos. “Kool G Rap, Q-Tip, Posdnuos – I’ll keep checking them off. I’ll get Just-Ice in there one day and then I’ll be good,” jokes Shadow. “Posdnuos is maybe my favourite emcee of all time,” he adds. “Because he’s brave, you know what I mean? He will always say things that are against the grain and that are risky. He doesn’t care about what everybody else thinks is the way. He and I discussed the whole concept of the track and I was talking about how I really miss in hip-hop that theme of ‘maintaining’. You never hear that phrase anymore. So many of those records, if you’re experiencing some sort of dark time in your life – ‘Survival of the Fittest’ by Mobb Deep and records like that – it’s like we’re all suffering and we’re all going through it in our own individual life and our own individual way, and it was such a valuable message to have in the music then. It’s totally extinct now – you never hear that theme.”

IT SEEMS FITTING THAT THE CALIFORNIAN MENTIONS THE IDEA OF MAINTAINING. EVER SINCE HE RELEASED THAT SEMINAL DEBUT ALBUM IN 1996  – a culturally significant record that perfectly captured the zeitgeist and garnered not only underground but commercial success – the producer has had his creative expression analysed and scrutinised, butchered to the point where so-called fans have brazenly

insulted his work over the last decade and a half. For an artist who reached such dizzying heights on his first release, there’s no doubting that the consequent backlash following albums two and three would have been hard to swallow. Yet despite all that, Davis has staunchly maintained, remaining the artist that he is throughout the years.

“All the artists that I look up to – that work for a long time – there’s albums and moments in their careers where they do something and it’s a total departure, but they’re following their muse and I admire that,” explains Shadow. “People that stick to their values rather than come out with something that not only they’re not into, but their fan base is really ‘whatever’ about it. I have to make music that I love first and foremost.”

When all is said and done, this is a musician who takes his art very seriously and who, no matter what, will not compromise. And that is what great artists are made of; after all, who ever made a difference by being safe? Ever-evolving and always progressing, with his new record Davis has come to that pivotal point in his career where he has crossed the threshold and ceased to be that guy who makes moody trip-hop music. What is a DJ Shadow album like then?

Well, it’s DJ Shadow.

Words: Ian Hsieh
Illustrations: Lun Wong (page 1), Leo Bennett (page 2) and Steve Williams (page 3)

DJ Shadow’s new album ‘The Less You Know, The Better’ is out now on Island Records. To check out the video for album track ‘Border Crossing’, click here.