A strong return from DJ Shadow.
Released in late 2019, DJ Shadow’s last studio album Our Pathetic Age fell through the gaps caused by the pandemic; with touring plans for summer 2020 shelved the album, like so many others, missed the opportunity to have life breathed into it on the stage.
DJ Shadow (real name Joshua Davis) instead took the time forced upon us to make music for himself again, without the validation supplied by guest vocalists or MCs, setting himself the challenge to, ‘write music that flexed different energies’.
The iconic producer reportedly listened to previously unheard records from his 60,000(!) strong vinyl collection for inspiration while also persistently questioning which chord progressions would be the least predictable when collating songs for what would become his seventh studio album.
With that in mind, compiling any form of coherence is an impressive achievement, yet Davis has done so masterfully. Indeed, Action Adventure arguably suffers from the opposite problem: on first listen, the variations in sound or tempo can be indiscernible. It’s subtler than that, and on repeated listens both the effort and intricacy is clear, with huge variations in scope.
Each half of the album has a sprawling centrepiece: Side One is defined by the stargazing Time And Space, a science-fiction opus which opens with gentle piano before hip-hop breakbeats propel it, fittingly, to parts unknown. Less a track, more a sequence of movements.
The eerie Reflecting Pool matches its 8-minute runtime but is a different beast, dubstepping its way along in the vein of Burial (who surely wouldn’t resent the appropriation, so indebted is he to Shadow).
Lead single (and track) Ozone Scraper glistens and sparkles with gloriously 1980’s polyphonic synths, the soundtrack to a great lost adventure movie, while second offering You Played Me broods menacingly. Clearly evoking DJ Shadow’s love of old school hip hop, it comprises of an obscure R&B acapella amended with brutal drums and stinging bass line. Whisper it, but it could be a pop song.
The trademark DJ Shadow percussion is present throughout, even if vocals are kept to a minimum. All My judders and bubbles, built around a short vocal hook (‘all my records and tapes’) bouncing off whipcrack percussion. Witches Vs Warlocks ups the BPM without foregoing the snappiness, while the choral dread of The Prophecy is the DJ at is foreboding best, rattling to create a sense of unease fitting for a piece of trip-hop.
Yet there are new sounds added into the mix. Free For All loops a country guitar sample, forming the bedrock of a track that bounces and rollicks, albeit not as deftly as Friend Or Foe, a sliver of light amid the dark. Craig, Ingels & Wrightson (named after runners for the USA) fares less well, being overlong and, fittingly, requiring a sense of endurance.
After a comparatively boisterous 10 tracks, Action Adventure draws breath. Fleeting Youth (An Audible Life) skims gracefully, the arrangement nurturing the song. All feeling, it adds purpose and emotion to its otherwise serene ambience, while the sparse Forever Changed finds beauty in sadness. Rounding things off, She’s Evolving finishes on an uplifting note, the fat beats (if you’ll excuse the expression) and itchy electronics looking forward, never back.
The edgy atmospherics and dystopian synths of Action Adventure aren’t to everyone’s tastes, but it’s impossible to deny DJ Shadow’s production brilliance.
To expect him to match the seminal Endtroducing is a fool’s errand, but he’s never been closer.
