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Joshua Paul Davis, better known by his stage name Dj Shadow, is a professional American music producer. Joshua was born in Davis, a suburb of Sacramento, California, in 1972.
Due to family problems, Joshua and his mother had to move to the outback of California, where the boy first began to get involved in music. For the first time, he tried himself as a music maker at Davis High School with a four-track recorder. The guy began his professional musical career in his university days, performing as a disc jockey both at separate university events and on the campus radio station KDVS at the University of California, where he studied back those days.
The very first works of Dj Shadow were remixes, released in 1991 on the little-known rap hip hop Hollywood BASIC label, after which Joshua switched to the underground hip-hop label Solesides. Here he released his first 12" named Entropy, after which the musician was noticed by the London label Mo' Wax.
The musician recorded his first singles entitled "In/Flux" and "Lost and Found (SFL)" in 1994. These tracks were a fusion of several styles, including funk, hip hop, rock, jazz, soul, and rock, which were similar to the typical Bristol trip-hop artist. This genre is commonly associated with Mo' Wax label.
So, at this point, the musician has temporarily moved to the United Kingdom to continue his professional career. Mo' Wax became the musician's first permanent label, on which he released his first full-length studio album "Endtroducing" in 1996. Subsequently, this album would become the most successful album in his musical career. The debut album was recognized as gold by BPI and also peaked in the top 20 UK charts. This album also managed to get into the Guinness Book of Records as the First Completely Sampled Album. The second in a row release from the label called Preemptive Strike is a compilation album, which was a professional re-release of Joshua's early works. Shadow sold nearly 150,000 copies in the US, which was a pretty good result for an aspiring underground musician.
The musician took part in the creation of a lucrative documentary called Dark Days in 2000-2001, after which Shadow concentrated on recording new tracks for a future studio album. The musician released the second studio album "The Private Press" in 2002, but this time not on Mo 'Wax label. Joshua signed with Island Records right before the release of the album, with whom he continued to collaborate until 2014. The Private Press also became a successful release, which gets gold status according to BPI, and gains quite good commercial success. During his collaboration with Island, he released two more studio albums, which were not as popular as the first or even the second albums, although they hit the top 5 of the US dance charts.
DJ Shadow signed with Mass Appeal label before the release of his 5th studio album. This album is more like the first two in terms of its success. He managed to pop to the first place in the US Dance Chart, as well as the album peaked at the top 20 UK charts. The latest studio album to date, Our Pathetic Age, was released in late 2019, receiving moderately good reviews from critics. All this time, Shadow has given performances around the world, well recognizable due to the visual component, simultaneously to studio activity. The artist had to revise the schedule of his concerts and postpone most of the concerts due to COVID-19 events. The musician himself stated that he used the time spent without live performances to work on new releases. Apparently, the musician does not plan to stop at this point and will continue to work on concerts and records.