When I'm representing my music live I think of it very much in a rock band sense. When I first started doing festivals in the 90s there really weren't other DJs playing the stages I was playing. So I felt I was being afforded an opportunity to kind of make a statement about what DJ music can be live. In the 90s, if you were a DJ you were in the dance tent, and you were playing house music and techno music. There was no such thing as a DJ - a solo DJ - on a stage, after a rock band and before another rock band: that just didn't happen.
DJ ShadowYou can be a great DJ and still be not very good at DJ Hero. And vice-versa: You can have never spun in your life on real turntables and be fine on DJ Hero.
DJ ShadowLike 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 ShadowI personally feel the need to experience life and new music and ideas before I can sit down and start writing music again.
DJ ShadowThe music that I have always liked has always been more rooted in anger or sadness or alienation or any of those inspirational factors that drove rock'n'roll, gospel, and blues. I tend not to value a more pop aesthetic.
DJ ShadowAs far as the mechanics of how the music was made, there's no denying: Endtroducing was extremely simple. That's not to denigrate it - that doesn't mean I'm knocking it or I'm saying my new stuff is better, or anything like that: it just means, I literally had, what, 12.5 seconds of stereo sampling at my disposal, and some turntable overdubs... The nature of the beast back then was probably about 50% looping and 50% chopping, and that was what you could do with samples.
DJ Shadow