Quote

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.

DJ Shadow

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DJ Shadow
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: June 29
Club Dj
Composer
Disc Jockey
Record Producer
Hayward
California
Joshua Paul Davis
Josh Davis
Joshua Davis
Work
Turns
Frequency
Kind
Making
Subconscious
Make
Else
Fears
Like
Two
Flow
Part
Turn
Music
Takes
Everything
Open
Tapping
Trying
Hours
Expose

More quotes by DJ Shadow

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I always like to remain a fan, put it that way: and I like to hold the idealised version of what these artists are like. Greed is one of those components of human nature that's inherent in everyone, and sometimes it is an unpleasant thing to engage in.
DJ Shadow
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I got asked to remix a lot of movie themes, like Mission Impossible, which other people ended up doing quite well. But it was just never my thing.
DJ Shadow
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As for my store, most artists' sites send you to a third-party storefront like iTunes, whereas we're disseminating it ourselves. I was always uncomfortable with the thought of sending somebody who came to my site to buy something to some other store. It just occurred to me, Why can't we do this?
DJ Shadow
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Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it.
DJ Shadow
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The conventional wisdom of fandom is that you must give your fans anything they want. But I've never felt that that's a healthy attitude - and that comes from being a Star Wars fan.
DJ Shadow
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Through it all, the words of John Peel echo strongly within me: you have support the music that's being made now. You have to continue to look forward and learn from what's happening. That's my philosophy, anyway.
DJ Shadow
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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.
DJ Shadow
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My core values are still the same about music, and my work ethic, and what I want to represent to people.
DJ Shadow
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Frequently, when I'm compared to someone, I'm like, Is that really what people think I sound like?
DJ Shadow
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When I think about the stuff I turned down it's kind of insane.
DJ Shadow
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Like a lot of other DJs, I've been wondering when the first DJ game was going to happen. Somebody even pitched me on their own idea and I thought, I'm not a video game startup I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this.
DJ Shadow
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There's any number of DJs who have inspired me over the years. I don't actively go out in clubs, so I can't tell you if there's some hot new talent out there who everybody's aware of but I'm not.
DJ Shadow
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I tend to gravitate away from the more trendy Ibiza style of dance music. It's not me.
DJ Shadow
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I personally feel the need to experience life and new music and ideas before I can sit down and start writing music again.
DJ Shadow
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Any good album title has multiple meanings, and I like choosing titles where I find myself repeating it, almost like a mantra.
DJ Shadow
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I was asked to do TV ads for Macintosh. Nowadays, I think anybody would jump at that but, at the time, it didn't feel appropriate for what I was trying to stand for.
DJ Shadow
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To be honest, I didn't really get into making music to be an album artist.
DJ Shadow
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When I'm looking for DJ sets and stuff to drop, I look for music that I feel is gonna get the reaction I want from the crowd.
DJ Shadow
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One of my favorite things that Yahoo does on a regular basis is this story: Wealthiest Rap Artists. That's an example of the internet just perpetuating this myth that we're all just sitting around in these mansions like Steven Tyler, bopping around in our swimming pool. It's bullshit.
DJ Shadow
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I saw. I wanted to start my own store so people would know that what they were buying was real. There were bootlegs around at the time that had my name on the cover, but the music had nothing to do with me. I'm not trying to compare myself to [Jimmie] Hendrix, but back in the '70s, there were some Hendrix bootlegs.
DJ Shadow