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
Like
Two
Flow
Part
Turn
Music
Takes
Everything
Open
Tapping
Trying
Hours
Expose
Work
Turns
Frequency
Kind
Making
Subconscious
Make
Else
Fears

More quotes by DJ Shadow

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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.
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.
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If I wanted to contribute to the hyphy movement, what good is it making a hyphy record that isn't embraced by that community?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I would agree with you that there's 90% imitation and 10% innovation. That's true of any genre.
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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.
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Anything that sparks some eight-year-old's interest in music or DJing is great.
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?
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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.
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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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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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.
DJ Shadow
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I'm not going to get on any anti-corporation soapbox to an extreme level.
DJ Shadow
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I always consider every album to be a snapshot.
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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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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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When I first pursued this with Universal, they had no idea what to do. But now that we've gone through the whole process and I've signed this 60-page document that says what we can and can't do, I suppose it will be a little bit easier for the next person.
DJ Shadow