DJ Shadow to release new album in June

by: Amanda Mesa Apr 8, 2016

Shadow fans rejoice: the San Jose native has announced a new album slated for release June 24 via Mass Appeal. Titled The Mountain Will Fall, the record features guest appearances from Nils Frahm, Run the Jewels, Ernie Fresh, Matthew Halsall, and more. In an interview with Pitchfork, Shadow said he knew exactly what he wanted to convey when creating this album.

“Every record I’ve ever made is a response to certain aspects of the prior record,” he said in the interview. He went on to describe how the album began to manifest after he took a show at L.A.’s Low End Theory, his first DJ performance in a decade. After that, Shadow took on festival DJ sets and began to shift away from his trademark use of samples and more towards Ableton Live software. Shadow went deeper into a more contemporary sound, which culminated in the launch of his Liquid Amber label.

The shows gave Shadow new ideas and encouraged him to push the envelope, much as he’s done throughout his entire career. That new, boundary-pushing vision is the impetus behind The Mountain Will Fall, and his driving force along the process of creating the album. In fact, the title of the album refers to that process in a metaphorical way, according to Shadow.

“It’s like being at base camp and looking up at an unconquerable mountain; can’t dwell on the difficulty, you have to just start the journey,” he wrote, adding: “One step follows the next which leads the way to the next. There will be missteps but as long as the vision is whole, the mountain will fall.”