Review: DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist concoct musical history lesson

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist play for a packed audience at The Commodore Ballroom, Thurs., Oct. 9, 2014. (Anil Sharma/CTV)

Thirty years ago the words “hip hop” was more than a synonym for rap music. As music nerds will be aware, the concept of hip hop, the culture that emerged from urban New York City before taking over the world was based on four theoretically equal artistic elements: rapping, breakdancing, graffiti and turntablism. And while the art of scratch DJing never produced global celebrities like Jay-Z, Eminem or Will Smith, it doesn’t mean that element has been forgotten.

Like last night at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom, where two of the world’s most respected (if not routinely mobbed by screaming fans on the street) hip-hop DJs teamed up for a nostalgic trip back to the birth of a musical movement.

In Pictures: DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist take trip back to the old school

DJ Shadow has been a byword for cool since his groundbreaking “Entroducing” (named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 greatest albums of all time) dropped back in 1996. Cut Chemist, best known for his work with old school hip-hop purists Jurassic 5, has been creating and rearranging beats for over two decades.

Together on stage, accompanied by six turntables and two crates of vintage vinyl, an amped up Commodore crowd was anticipating magic. Especially after DJ Shadow announced the spiritual presence of another mythical DJ.

“We don’t own any of these records,” explained Shadow. “These belong to Afrika Bambaataa.”

And so began a two-hour journey through the record collection of the Godfather of Hip Hop, Shadow and Cut Chemist dexterously reconstructing beats in front of rolling visuals celebrating the music that inspired and propelled the culture into existence.

If the sound of two DJs reinterpreting the record collection of another massively influential DJ and producer appears achingly hip to the point of pretension, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The point of the exercise wasn’t to deliver hits. The idea was by digging into the deepest recesses of Bambaataa’s crates, the roots and feeling of the dawn of hip hop (a culture that was never about cash, guns or booty), the spirit of an exhilarating and unstoppable underground movement stays alive.

So what did Shadow and Cut Chemist spin? It started with James Brown, appropriately enough, before getting into deep funk, soul, salsa and soca, re-emerging into the recognisable with Chic’s “Good Times” and a Jamaican, female version of “Rapper’s Delight.”

Digging even deeper, and demonstrating how Afrika Bambaataa created the sound of early hip hop by embracing diverse musical genres, plodding dub was blended with Kraftwerk, early rap classic “The Message” and even “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by British prog giants Yes.

Following a thematic, rather than a chronological, narrative, Shadow and Cut Chemist’s mix celebrating the birth of rap was a welcome reminder of how funky and diverse the music still sounds; Miami bass mingling with Run DMC, Bambaataa’s own “Renegades” and “Planet Rock”, and the record that spawned the entire breakbeat movement, the Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache.”

The Vancouver crowd, buoyed by nostalgia for a past virtually none of them were old enough (or New York enough) to have experienced in person, lapped it up with barely an unshaken tush in the house.

Indeed, the only potentially disappointed party was the one person not present. With both DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist repeatedly putting their considerable scratching skills into effect on these precious discs, who knows what condition the vinyl is going to be in when they finally return it to Afrika Bambaataa?