DJ Shadow – The Private Press

This clip from a 2008 Crate Kings article talks about how DJ Shadow ditched the Akai MPC 60 and MPC 3000 as his main production tools. Shadow said:

"At the time, in 2002, I felt as though ‘The Private Press’ was the best record I could ever make on the MPC, and I was eager for a change. It was also important to me that I not get stagnant and start repeating things I had done in the past. So I switched it up and forced myself to "go back to school," in a sense. I felt that if I refused to rely on the MPC and learn new techniques my music would change, for better or worse, and change was what I craved most."

Mentioned in this October 2017 Sound on Sound interview.

Davis’ trusty old MPC60, though, is sadly long gone from his setup. Over successive DJ Shadow albums, however, he has progressed through variations on it: upgrading to an MPC2000 for his production of Unkle’s 1998 album Psyence Fiction, then MIDI’ing two of them together for the second DJ Shadow album The Private Press, released in 2002.

“I basically had nearly unlimited sample power and chop power,” he says. “But after The Private Press, I felt like it was important to switch things up. I had purchased Pro Tools so I was fully up and running on that. There’s probably two or three songs on [2006’s] The Outsider where the initial ideas or sketches were done on an MPC. It’s been I’d say 13, 14 years since I used one.

“I will say though that in I think about 2008, I got whatever was new at that time [the MPC5000], thinking, ‘Oh I kinda miss it, let me see what the new version’s like.’ But I just couldn’t go back. It seemed a bit silly to me, knowing what was possible within stuff like Maschine. Once you go into the software synth world, it’s really hard to legitimise going back into the box.”

It is also mentioned in this October 17, 2016 Music Radar interview.

"After that, I went to Pro Tools. I always feel like it's important to break out of your comfort zone a little bit, but I'll say that Ableton Live is the most intuitive music-making program I've used since the MPC - much more so than Pro Tools or Maschine, but that might just be the way my brain works.

Used on The Private Press and Unkle's Psyence Fiction, as mentioned in this October 2017 Sound on Sound interview.

Davis’ trusty old MPC60, though, is sadly long gone from his setup. Over successive DJ Shadow albums, however, he has progressed through variations on it: upgrading to an MPC2000 for his production of Unkle’s 1998 album Psyence Fiction, then MIDI’ing two of them together for the second DJ Shadow album The Private Press, released in 2002.

“I basically had nearly unlimited sample power and chop power,” he says. “But after The Private Press, I felt like it was important to switch things up. I had purchased Pro Tools so I was fully up and running on that. There’s probably two or three songs on [2006’s] The Outsider where the initial ideas or sketches were done on an MPC. It’s been I’d say 13, 14 years since I used one.

“I will say though that in I think about 2008, I got whatever was new at that time [the MPC5000], thinking, ‘Oh I kinda miss it, let me see what the new version’s like.’ But I just couldn’t go back. It seemed a bit silly to me, knowing what was possible within stuff like Maschine. Once you go into the software synth world, it’s really hard to legitimise going back into the box.”

Mentioned in this October 2017 Sound on Sound interview.

Davis’ trusty old MPC60, though, is sadly long gone from his setup. Over successive DJ Shadow albums, however, he has progressed through variations on it: upgrading to an MPC2000 for his production of Unkle’s 1998 album Psyence Fiction, then MIDI’ing two of them together for the second DJ Shadow album The Private Press, released in 2002.

“I basically had nearly unlimited sample power and chop power,” he says. “But after The Private Press, I felt like it was important to switch things up. I had purchased Pro Tools so I was fully up and running on that. There’s probably two or three songs on [2006’s] The Outsider where the initial ideas or sketches were done on an MPC. It’s been I’d say 13, 14 years since I used one.

“I will say though that in I think about 2008, I got whatever was new at that time [the MPC5000], thinking, ‘Oh I kinda miss it, let me see what the new version’s like.’ But I just couldn’t go back. It seemed a bit silly to me, knowing what was possible within stuff like Maschine. Once you go into the software synth world, it’s really hard to legitimise going back into the box.”

In the Youtube video titled "DJ Shadow Live @ La Route Du Rock 2002" by julfra76, DJ Shadow can be seen using two Pioneer EFX-500 modules as part of his live setup during "The Private Press" tour in 2002.