DJ Shadow - Action Adventure

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.

https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/review-dj-shadow-action-adventure/