It is clear from the moment Josh Davis ambles on to the Academy's yawning stage that this is not going to be a run-of-the-mill show. "Everything tonight is gonna be mine," he feels the need to explain before the set begins, elaborating that if we're looking for a night of Ibiza trance, we're out of luck.
That he earns a sizeable cheer from his second sold-out crowd of the weekend underlines that the Bay Area maverick has done much to ensure the great unwashed understand the difference between a DJ and someone who plays records.
Utilising a similar set-up to when he last toured the UK, Davis performs in front of three giant video screens, though the main difference this time is that the screens start at floor level, rather than above his head, so he spends his time performing in, uh, Shadow. Which is fairly neat.
This is mood music; passionate, stirring stuff, compiled from samples of real instruments played by real people with hearts, souls and active emotional lives, as far removed from labels like "dance" or "electronica" as it is from "rock" or "punk". Shadow's gift is that he's able to take inspiration from everywhere, take sonic elements from seemingly unlikely places, and graft them into a single, powerful heartbeat of a sound.
The set opens and closes with the low-pitched throb of 'Fixed Income', the first track proper on his brilliant recent LP 'The Private Press', and the screens take us on a journey from outer space, down beneath the clouds, into the city and right there inside the grooves of a record, right at the epicentre of the music.
The rest of the set flits by in what Shadow refers to as "sections" or "routines", but could just as easily be called "movements". There are delves into the better parts of the mixed UNKLE bag (Richard Ashcroft's disembodied wail on 'Lonely Soul' segueing into Kool G Rap's brilliantly belligerent 'Guns Blazing') and a stirring retread of 'Six Days', prefaced by a simplistic but heartfelt monologue against a looming Gulf war.
Highs are many, not least when Shadow leaves the LP material behind, or where the visuals enhance his already fecund creativity. A radical disassembly and reconstruction of 'The Private Press's stop-frame classic 'Monosyllabik' is accompanied by a wry potted history of England on the screens, and quotes from those noted philosophers, Bertrand Russell and Keith Richards. 'Mashin' On The Motorway' is Stephen Spielberg's 'Duel' converted into three minutes of music, and 'You Can't Go Home Again''s accompaniment of a speedy descent from the mountains to the sea captivates and hypnotises.
Spellbinding.
