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Sep 22, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Koury Angelo

DJ Shadow is releasing a new album, Action Adventure, on October 26 via Mass Appeal/Liquid Amber. Now he has shared another song from the album, “You Played Me,” via a music video. The Reggies directed the video. Watch it below, followed by DJ Shadow’s upcoming live performances.

The song started out via 200 tapes of music recorded off the radio in the Baltimore/D.C. area in the ’80s that DJ Shadow got on eBay. From those tapes DJ Shadow created an instrumental track. “I loaded up the instrumental and looped it on my computer to play forever,” he explains in a press release.

Next he began searching for vocals for the song, searching through his record collection. “I dropped the needle on an a cappella of a really obscure R&B 12-inch from around ’84, ’85 and I thought, ‘That actually works.’”

He then tried to find a singer to add guest vocals to the track, before deciding that the original a cappella vocals he added were perfect as is. “It’s an example of one of my favorite aspects of the music I make, which is just 100% serendipity. There are a thousand records sitting next to me that aren’t going to work; the right record got put on at the right moment to change the course of my album. It’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever made.”

Action Adventure is the follow-up to 2019’s Our Pathetic Age, which was a double album. DJ Shadow began work on the album on January 1, 2022. Previously he shared the album’s first single, “Ozone Scraper.”

DJ Shadow Live Appearances:

October 6 - Headlining Submersion Festival - Hammonton, NJ
October 8 - Fool’s Gold 15th Anniversary Residency w/DJ Shadow, A-Trak, Remy Banks, Eden - Public Records - Brooklyn, NY
October 21 - Mission Ballroom - Denver, CO w/ Thievery Corporation
October 22 - Radius - Chicago, IL w/ Thievery Corporation
October 29 - LEVITATION Festival - Austin, TX
October 31 - 1015 Folsom - San Francisco, CA

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