DJ Shadow releases new single, "You Played Me"

“You Played Me” was partly inspired by an eBay auction of 200 tapes that were recorded from a radio mix station in the Baltimore/D.C. area in the ‘80s – a distinct blend of dance music, R&B and early hip-hop. Shadow created a beat that had the crackling percussion and burbling synths of classic ‘80s R&B, like a lost René and Angela hit.

“I loaded up the instrumental and looped it on my computer to play forever,” he explains. Then he started dropping the needle on records in his collection that he hadn’t processed yet—an experiment to find the vocal in the haystack. “I dropped the needle on an acapella of a really obscure R&B 12-inch from around ‘84, ‘85 and I thought, ‘That actually works.’”

After a few weeks of looking for a featured guest to sing on it, he realised he already had what he needed—the acapella was correct. “It's an example of one of my favourite aspects of the music I make, which is just 100% serendipity. There are a thousand records sitting next to me that aren't going to work; the right record got put on at the right moment to change the course of my album. It’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever made.”

The video was directed by The Reggies (Dillon Francis, Young Gravy, Aluna, more) and filmed at the National Audio Company in Missouri, a working factory that continues to manufacture cassette tapes.

His eighth studio LP, Action Adventure finds DJ Shadow continuing to evolve over 14 mostly instrumental tracks with no featured guests. Though he isn’t classically trained, he asked himself questions like “which chord progression would be most natural here, and which would be least predictable?” and worked according to the inner logic that felt right to him. His rule for the record was simple: no compromises.