DJ Shadow Brixton Academy DJ Shadow (plus guests) @ Brixton Academy – 18.10.02 On a cold October night, the queue to see the Bay Area legend stretched all the way round the side of the Brixton Academy. Tonight has sold out well in advance and the punters were obviously keen to peep Shadow’s first solo material since 1997’s classic ‘Endtroducing’. All sorts from crusties to b-people, trip-hop heads to Hoxtonites (they get everywhere don’t they?) waited impatiently to be ushered beneath the world famous green dome. Double bass and turntable combo Fingathing worked the crowd early with a funky and innovative set taken from their ‘Main Event’ LP as well as a couple of new ‘uns from ‘Super-Hero Music’ that drew loud applause from the partially filled auditorium. Next up was Beans (formerly of Anti-Pop Consortium) who took to the stage with a chair and, erm that’s it. If you are yet to witness Beans live, ya boy Kobi heartily recommends it, not least because of his crazy dancing (Like Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable on acid). From his opening a capella he had the crowd eating out of his hands and despite staying rooted to the spot centre-stage Beans projected enough energy and presence to capture the attention. After dipping into the APC back catalogue, Beans dropped some material from his forthcoming solo album, before making way for Too Many DJ’s. I have to admit that I was somewhat caught off guard by TMD. Having always seen Shadow as a standard bearer for the stoner vibes of Mo’ Wax I was hardly expecting some of the punishing techno that the boys spun. But their flex is to try and bowl through as many genres and tunes as possible in their allotted time. And credit to them for getting through pretty much everything from (and including) Michael Jackson and Orbital, and mixing it all with train-spotter precision, but for this head, after a hard days work and almost 3 grams of ‘herbal sedative’ it all got a bit much and I spent the end of their set cowering in the toilets. Having pulled myself together, I was on hand to witness the man known as Josh to his moms, walk on stage to deafening applause. He briefly let us know how happy he was to be playing in a venue which Public Enemy had torn down 14 years previously and told us of his intention to use the Technics 1210’s, CD turntables and MPC that had been laid out on tables centre stage to recreate his own back catalogue. Such are Shadow’s musical principles that he also made the lofty claim that he would be the only DJ we heard all year who would mix in time and in key. The man then proceeded to tear down the Academy dwarfed by 3 massive projector screens, which gave a close up of Shadow’s hands working the machinery amongst other things. Having gone through the majority of’ Endtroducing’ (tonight was the second time he had ever played ‘Stem’ live), Product Placement, Brainfreeze, Pre-Emptive Strike, a smattering of Solesides material, and Unkle (“Drums of Death Pt.1” with Kool G Rap’s verses filled in by the MPC was heavy) in two hours Shadow left the stage, only to return to play for another whole hour. During the encore Shadow showcased a new project he has been recently perfecting which involves sampling actual video clips onto the MPC. It sounds a lot less impressive than it is in words but seeing him making a tune out of an instructional drum video (Check out dude’s 80’s mullet, yo) was something else. When Shadow finally left the stage there was no bottle throwing by punters who felt that they had been shortchanged. My brain is still struggling to process everything I saw that night - Kobi | profile © ukhh.com 1999 - 2002