So saw DJ Shadow last night…
The warm up act ‘Stateless’ were crap, bunch of emo’s who thought it would be cool to add some scratching and ocasional breakbeat to their guitar filled whining!
So was glad when they were out the way and got to see Shadow. He came on and introduced himself, giving a bit of history about himself. Named his first 3 albums and everyone in the crowd went mental… then said he had just released his 4 album ‘The Outsider’ and the was a general mumbling/sniggering in the crowd followed by a fairly unified booing! He responded almost as if this wasn’t the first time he had got that respsone with “I guess you all want me to keep doing the same old thing”… crowd reply “yes!”.
I hadn’t heard any of his new album so couldn’t really pass judgement at this point. He started well with some of his classic stuff from Endtroducing and played the classic ‘Six Days’. The visuals were incredible and for the first 20mins prob the best I’ve seen at any gig… on reflection I think this was probably because he was playing the majority of the set from DVD turntables. He did manage to keep it interesting tho by dropping in bits from different tune here and there… it was essentially a DJ set tho, with him playing riffs over the top when he felt inclined!
About 30mins in it all went wrong, he played some pop rnb tune where the video was diabolical, kinda baren winter fields with a rappers head in the top left with a kinda fade on it… too much bling and was pretty cringeworthy. From here on in he played more “hiphop” (he actually obviously meant pop/rnb). He then brought out his special guests, one of which was the singer from the support band for more of his nonsense. He got booed off which was a shame, but fair! The other support act was some mc/rapper… did a good job of hyping the by now rowdy crowd but the music he played to was pretty boring rnb beats.
Picked up at the end with a live rendition of ‘Organ Donor’, didn’t know he actually played the riff on that, always thought it was sampled. Encore was a but odd tho, was a bit dubious if he was going to get the support for one but he came back non-the-less and instead of playing one of his most famous tunes he played a 15minute electro/80’s/glitchy/breakbeat kinds of set which I didn’t enjoy at all… at this point he had turned the volume up on everything so much that it was literally a wall of noise, some tracks were so loud I couldn’t even get the rhythm it was so distorted… why do this?
So in summary… good first 20/30 minutes then I should have left. I have listened to his album on iTunes to see if he just picked a bad selection and there is only one track ‘This Time’ that I would consider good, ill just buy that individually and forget this album ever existed. When he was good he was pretty good but when bad it was dire! Kinda wish he hadn’t spoiled the illusion, Im gonna try forget about it and remember him for Endtroducing!
