DJ Shadow has been hard at work on the follow-up to his 2002 album, The Private Press. The turntable master has finally given us a glimpse of his new material with the recent posting of the audio and video for “3 Freaks”, featuring underground rappers Keak Da Sneak and Turf Talk. Gone are the patented Shadow drum loops that I love so dearly. He wasn’t kidding around when he mentioned that the new tunes are “very different.”
In a statement on his site, Shadow said: “Stylistically, it’s very different from The Private Press. Some have said Press was an inward-looking album. If that’s true, than this album is the opposite, and that suits me just fine. I’ve also stopped worrying if my changing taste in music costs me fans. You can’t please everybody all the time, but you can please yourself.”
No other album information has been announced yet, so “3 Freaks” will have to tide us over for now. As a longtime fan of his, I am very curious about the new direction he is going musically. Are his days of digging through record shop basements for obscure gems to sample long gone? If this one song is any indication, it unfortunately looks that way. Hopefully we won’t have to wait much longer to find out. Click here to see the new video for yourself.
