The Great Escape: DJ SHADOW @ The Dome, Brighton 12/05/2011

DJ Shadow blew apart The Great Escape on its opening night. Over the three-day period Brighton was a non-stop live party with gigs popping up all over town. But DJ Shadow’s groundbreaking set at The Dome was a true standout performance, and his first in Brighton for (as he tweeted after the show) “EONS”!

DJ Shadow (aka Josh Davies) bought his Shadowsphere show to UK for the first time. Playing inside a specially made sphere containing him and his array of decks, mixers, laptops and drum machines. Whilst he made the big beats on the inside, on the outside were some the freshest live visuals created by music video director and visual artist Ben Stokes. A plethora of projectors beamed onto the backdrop and onto the sphere creating a real 3D effect that raised the bar of audio-visual DJ sets and surpassed anything that has come before. Awesome effects like the sphere becoming an oscillating basketball whilst the backdrop is a basketball court (bouncing around accordingly), or the chainsaw on the backdrop cutting through the sphere in the foreground was another standout effect (to name only two).

Despite the size of the venue (over 2000 capacity), and the fact the Shadow was hidden from view for most of the set, the show still had a genuine level of intimacy and real club atmosphere. No doubt the tightness of Shadow’s set and his mixing skills created this, combined with neat tricks by the visuals such as tiny fisheye cameras inside the sphere filming him whilst simultaneously projecting the maestro onto the outside wall of the sphere. About a third of the way through the set the music and projection ceased and a spotlight shined on the sphere, a single hand poped up through the top of the sphere and waved to great cheers, then the spheres side swung open to reveal the man inside and the set continued in the flesh.

Whilst showcasing new material from his upcoming album and current EP, “I Gotta Rokk”, Shadow neatly packed in his classic beats into the set list constantly reminding us of the wealth of tunes he has created in his nearly 20 year back catalogue. When he dropped “Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt” as his second mix and when the beat kicked in, there wasn’t a head in venue that wasn’t boppin’ in unison. From then on DJ Shadow owned the crowd and didn’t let up till long after the encore.

Creating an atmosphere of intimacy and grandeur, of nostalgia (again on Twitter, Shadow wrote, “thank you Brighton…made me think of the old Mo Wax days”) and modern innovation, and combining some of the finest mixing and beats with a visual performance, both of which would have been remarkable without the other, but combined made this a show that pushed the boundaries of live mixing and visual performance, taking them together to a whole new place.

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