- The last time I saw DJ Shadow, which was at Sonar in 2006, I felt betrayed. His set relentlessly and unashamedly pushed ‘hyphy’, which left a sour taste in my mouth, so when I heard that he was coming to Perth I wasn't sure what to expect. The hyphy movement was a crunky reaction against commercial hip hop in the Bay Area, but it had become its own monster, and the disappointing album ‘The Outsider’ was a product of that. So I’d be lying if I said that I had high expectations for the gig, especially as ‘The Outsider’ was the ostensible subject of the tour.
But I have to eat my words. What a set! We got ‘Entroducing…’, ‘Private Press’, Quannum Projects, U.N.K.L.E tracks, the good cuts from ‘The Outsider’ and just enough hyphy to stock up at the bar. Shadow mixed and scratched the whole kit and caboodle in his typical nonchalant style, making the impossible look effortless. Gift of the Gab from Blackalicious/Quannum Projects was a giant presence in his top hat – like most MCs he took control of the stage, which left Shadow, a man not shy of the mic himself, looking a little disappointed to be left out of the limelight. Gab's part in the set was a little short, we even missed out on the last (and arguably the best) verse of 'Make You Feel That Way', but we did get 'Alphabet Aerobics' in which he rhymed non-stop through the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, keeping the crowd content.
Tracks from ‘Entroducing…’ and ‘Private Press’ such as' Building Steam with a Grain of Salt' and '6 Days' were all perfectly seasoned with splashes of ‘heavy’, pots and pans and breakbeat mixes, all of which announced that he was back. It was great to hear a few of his collaborations with Ian Brown, but no one had any idea how far he would go when he whipped out an extraterrestrial mix of the back catalogue of his U.N.K.L.E collaborations, including 'Rabbit in Your Headlights', 'Nursery Rhyme and 'Walkie Talkie'. I think I might have even heard 'Celestial Annihilation' and 'Blood on the Motorway' from ‘Endtroducing…’ somewhere in the controlled chaos. Shadow introduced his set with the words "It’s going to be one big giant mess", and it certainly, and happily, was.