DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist DJ'd from Afrika Bambaataa's collection at 2 NYC shows w/ Edan & Paten Locke (pics)

September 9, 2014

DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist / Afrika Bambaataa himself

[Everything] that went under the needle during Shadow and Chemist’s propulsive 90-minute spree of old-school breakbeats and frenetic scratches, the disc came from Bambaataa’s fabled 42,000-piece record collection. That house of wax is part of an even bigger archive that Bambaataa, now 57, donated in 2013 to the Hip Hop Collection at Cornell University, where he is a visiting scholar. But every thump, riff and shout that boomed through the room tonight – including brazenly manipulated chunks of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Sing a Simple Song,” Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” and Bambaataa’s own ’83 jam “Renegades of Funk” – was pulled from the same LPs and 12-inch singles that Bambaataa broadcast across Bronx playgrounds and used to fill the floors at clubs all over New York in the late Seventies and early Eightes.

…At the end of the night, Bambaataa – who watched the set from the balcony – came down to the stage and took a bow, a radiant smile belying the inscrutable effect of his giant Sun Ra-like shades. His life’s work may now be a library, but it’s still a revolution with wheels. [Rolling Stone]

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist brought their tour DJing exclusively from the legendary Afrika Bambaataa‘s personal vinyl collection (check it out) to NYC for two shows last week, September 4 and 5 at Irving Plaza. Bambaataa was in attendance for both (as the review quoted above describes from the first night). Opening the shows was a set from Edan and his collaborator Paten Locke. Did you catch either of the shows? How were they?

Pictures of the second night are in this post and continue below…

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