slunk music

DJ Shadow at the House of Blues last night was an incredible show. Shadow put on a great performance dipping mostly into his Entroducing and Private Press catalogue plus some new material. Equally impressive was the video mixer and stage setup. Shadow’s rig was setup inside an orb, dubbed the Shadowsphere, that video and lights were projected onto. The visuals mixing had to be entertaining enough to keep the audience interested since two-thirds of the set Shadow was hidden inside the Shadowsphere, and they were. He did come out of his shell a handful of times spinning the sphere around revealing an open back where the audience could see Shadow mix.

Shadow’s set and performance was a departure from when I saw him back in 2002 at the Gypsy Tes Room. The crowd and setup was much smaller. The show was more of a greatest hits performance with overhead camera’s revealing in detail how he could reproduce his album cuts on the fly. While I wished that I could have seen more of him at work on Friday, the amazing VJ performance was up to the challenge of matching Shadow beat for beat.

Here’s terrible video I took at the show.