I don’t know how someone of Shadow’s stature ends up in a 250-seat central Virginia theater but Ronan grabbed 2 tickets, birthday-gifted me one, and we bounced out to C’ville to see the show. All Basses Covered is the same tour that had the infamous Miami date where the club shut down the set for being “too future”. You can stream or download that set here. A lot of the music at that link was on offer last night and it was great. Because the full set is evolving, Shadow said that there were some bits that were only a week or two old. “Fresh Beats”, indeed.
Since it was a grand tour through bass-heavy music in all kinds of genres (and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres) I recognized a couple of different breaks. He played a little of his “Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt” that set the crowd off and the first part of the Beatles’ “Come Together”. The house sound had the bass cranked to 12 so both of those shook the floor when they hit their low notes. It was terrific.
And then, after the show he set up at the merch table to sign stuff. Crazy. We waited in line for half an hour and he signed my ticket stub. I asked him about some ridiculously great break from the middle of the set which he told me the name of but I can’t find any reference to it online. He seemed like a cool guy who knows how good his gig is.
I got home later than I wanted to but it was totally worth it.