Today, sampling means something very different than it did three decades ago. When Josh Davis was working on his debut album, Endtroducing…, his samples were dug out in record stores, lifted from vinyl’s dusty grooves and squeezed into little more than a megabyte of memory on the Akai MPC60. These were the methods that Davis, better known as DJ Shadow, used to create the world’s first entirely sample-based album, a monumentally influential record not only in the means of its production, but the sample-flipping, genre-flexing genius of the music itself.
Nowadays, many of us are more likely to open up Splice and slice a WAV on our DAW’s timeline than drop the needle on a record. Davis, though, isn’t the least bit precious about preserving the tools and techniques he used to make his masterpiece, telling us that any “old-school mentality” he harboured has long since evaporated. “It’s not so much about what you’re using or where you’re taking it from, but more the ideas that you’re adding to it,” he tells us. “It’s about the way it’s being used and the way it’s being manipulated. The ideas, more than ever, are what drives interesting music for me.”
It’s this philosophy that fuels Davis’ latest project, Action Adventure. His seventh solo LP, the record explores Davis’ personal relationship with music, not only as a producer but as a lifelong collector and curator. With no scene-stealing features and far fewer samples than previous releases, the project finds Davis sharpening his focus on the fundamentals, digging deep into designing unique sounds, crafting captivating arrangements and writing chords and melodies that evade the obvious. It’s another stage in the evolution of a perpetually forward-looking artist, driven by a relentless desire to evolve, broaden and perfect his craft.
We caught up with DJ Shadow from his home in San Francisco to find out moretalking through the serendipity of discovering the perfect sample, the importance of fine-tuning your bullshit detector, and why he’ll never go back to the MPC.
