Californian innovator DJ Shadow (aka Joshua Davis) is making a statement by not making a statement with his All Bases Covered tour. The Godfather of Alternative Hip Hop will play his favourite new music in a pared-back format geared to diehard fans.

“It all took shape really organically,” Davis explains. “I was asked by some friends of mine to DJ. It was an opportunity for me to do something I hadn't done in a really long time, which was to put together a set of contemporary music that I'm into – because for most of the last 15 years I've either been out doing a Shadow-centric live show or I've done a concept DJ set, like, with DJ Chemist, for example, where we use old 45s or something.” Davis drops anything from Chicago's footwork and juke to trap, keeping it ultra-fresh. “Half of my set is built off producers who might only have a hundred Twitter followers,” he laughs. Davis is taken, too, by “harder-edged rap producers”, such as Mike WiLL Made It.

The San Fran turntablist will always be known for 1996's sample-based debut, Endtroducing....., on James Lavelle's UK label Mo' Wax. Davis' experimental instrumental beats putatively inspired the term 'trip hop'. On his freewheeling third album, The Outsider, this original Diplo actually dipped into Bay Area hyphy with 3 Freaks. Davis also teamed with Lavelle for UNKLE's Psyence Fiction, a B-boy's post-rock opus, with Thom Yorke a guest.

Davis agrees his later LPs, including 2011's The Less You Know, The Better, have often been overlooked. The Less… thematised Davis' ambivalence towards digital technology. Ironically, he resides in Silicon Valley – and spends up to 12 hours a day online (he uses a laptop when DJing). “You're just bombarded with this message every day that your life is incomplete without [the] latest gadget or app. It seemed like there was absolutely no other voice saying, 'Well, what are we losing? What have we lost by just sort of blindly embracing technology to the extent that we have? And who's benefitted from it? I mean, is it the average person or is it a select few? Trust me, where I live there's a lot of rich dotcomers walking around. I think a lot of what we're buying into is just another con game.”

Davis' influence is pervasive, his production techniques (and aesthetic) evident even in The Weeknd's illwave R&B. “There's certain sounds that I feel are Shadow-esque or whatever, but it's not like I could really sit back and be like, 'Oh, they obviously were influenced by my stuff'. I really don't think about music that way. I definitely can tell when somebody's just trying to straight rip-off something I've done – and I've heard that a few times, especially back in the '90s! But I guess I just hear things that I like and I don't really think about where I fit into it. It's just like, I hear it and I like it – and that's good enough.”