I still consider myself a consumer of music more than anything el... by DJ Shadow

I still consider myself a consumer of music more than anything else.

DJ Shadow

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Categorized in : Stills Consumers

When I make music, it takes me two hours to get into the flow. To me it's like tapping into some kind of subconscious frequency: I just have to turn everything else off, open up part of myself, expose my fears and try to work through it in the music that I'm making.

flow trying two

Yeah, I do. HipHop was, though I would not say all, cause I try to keep myself open to other things, but nearly all I listend to for the last 14 years of my life.

lasts trying years

In certain cases I don't want to sell tracks individually; I want to only sell the whole album. With simple things like that I just don't get any response [from iTunes]. I don't want to kill iTunes - I just want to offer my own retail experience in my own tiny corner of the Internet.

albums track simple

I would agree with you that there's 90% imitation and 10% innovat... by DJ Shadow

I would agree with you that there's 90% imitation and 10% innovation. That's true of any genre.

genre imitation innovation

There are a lot of music startups that don't have anything to do with anyone's love for music. It has to do with them having a glorious IPO and then retiring to the Bahamas somewhere. It's important to keep that in mind.

bahamas important mind

I couldn't make a real drum'n'bass or dubstep record to save my life. But I can be influenced by them in small ways.

dubstep records real

Frequently, when I'm compared to someone, I'm like, "Is that real... by DJ Shadow

Frequently, when I'm compared to someone, I'm like, "Is that really what people think I sound like?"

sound people thinking

I think one of the things about ageing is the jagged peaks become a little bit mellower...? Heheh. And I feel like I'm able to understand a little bit better where that sort of tack comes from.

I've tried to tell people that the reason I don't really get excited over good press is that I don't want to get agitated over bad press. I don't wanna get too high on good press, too low on bad press. It's just not a healthy way to engage with my own feelings about my music.

healthy feelings people

Incidentally, the very, very first review that James Lavelle and I saw of Endtroducing was very negative! It was in The Wire, and the context of the review was that, you know, Mo'Wax was so far behind Ninja Tune. Heheheh. And people wonder why there was this sense of a feud between labels! We just kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'Oh, well, let the floodgates open!' But, not to be facile, that was literally the last bad review I ever saw for that album.

wire people negative

It's about respecting what I think people like about the original music. I'm not gonna ever take it to the extent that I'm kinda George Lucas-ing moments of the album over and over again, trying to get them right over the next 30 years - I don't wanna do anything like that. But, yeah - it's a... fascinating conundrum through the years.

trying people thinking

When I play that music live nowadays, there's a lot of things I feel I'd like to do - even things I don't think the audience is aware of, like layering subs underneath the kicks, and layering crisp hats underneath the muddy, trashy hats of the '90s. If I tried to play the music as it was next to my contemporary music, it just sounds like you're closing up half of the sonic spectrum.

audience like-you thinking

As far as the mechanics of how the music was made, there's no denying: Endtroducing was extremely simple. That's not to denigrate it - that doesn't mean I'm knocking it or I'm saying my new stuff is better, or anything like that: it just means, I literally had, what, 12.5 seconds of stereo sampling at my disposal, and some turntable overdubs... The nature of the beast back then was probably about 50% looping and 50% chopping, and that was what you could do with samples.

beast simple mean

I feel less and less like that every year, and I guess maybe even more so with every new record that I put out. I just think, as the years go by, it's harder and harder to really find a reason to be annoyed that you made something that people want to continuously talk about. Certainly there are contexts in which the record can be discussed which will get me on the defensive and make me want to put some kind of calibration or some kind of context on what the record means in relation to my career as a whole.

mean people thinking

I think a band - even a band that's been around as long as the Rolling Stones - I think that's still the formula. You know you're gonna get those songs, and you don't mind sitting through the ones that you maybe don't know very well because you know they're not gonna let you down - they're not gonna mess with you. And I kind of feel the same way about the way I structure my shows.

song long thinking

Another one of my favourite sayings is, you can't handpick your audience. I feel like I'm making music for people who think like me about music, and that takes a lot of different forms. I could never generalise - but I think if I were to generalise, I'd think that you would say that most of my fans are music lovers who are looking for something outside of the mainstream: maybe a little bit hard to pin down, a little bit hard to categorise.

different people thinking

I almost feel like there's some kind of connection that I'm having trouble putting in to words, in the same sense that I'm learning things from my children still. I think, just like any relationship, if I choose to become twisted and bitter it can be a source of distress or discomfort. But I think I've come to terms with the fact that I would prefer to see it as a gift. And I would prefer to see it as something that empowers me rather than something that diminishes me in some way.

empowering children thinking

I think I would be much more enthusiastic about a band that covered more than just one particular album of mine. I don't ever really intend to record or to do shows with a live band. I don't really have a problem with it, but it doesn't really affect me either way.

enthusiastic problem thinking

I have a natural fear of anything that feels like celebrating my own past to an extent that doesn't allow me to continue to look forward. I don't know psychologically why it is, but I get a little uncomfortable with nostalgia.

nostalgia natural past

I feel like you're being coy if you don't do something and celebrate the 20th or 25th anniversary in some way. Just as I've never, ever had any kind of embargo on playing songs from Endtroducing, no matter how much I wanted people to like my new stuff - I've never, ever stopped playing Endtroducing, for that reason as well. It's a give and take - it's a balance. If there's one theme, I guess, to this entire discussion, then it's that.

song giving people