DJ Shadow

Mainly, I just use an Akai MPC-3000

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.”

”When I first started using my MPC-60 Mach II back in early '92 it was so new. No one was using them.”