More scratches than a girl fight, a human-sized hamster ball, jaw-dropping visuals and sweet, sweet music…either that’s an excerpt from the notebook you scribble in while high, or it’s all you can remember from a terrifying acid nightmare. Luckily for you this time it’s neither, as it also loosely describes DJ Shadow’s performance at the Hordern Pavilion.

The undercard for the night included sets by local group Ghoul, followed by a DJ set from the Midnight Juggernauts. Not the biggest drawcards in regards to support acts, and it showed as the venue remained reasonably spacious until it was time for DJ Shadow (or more on-point: the Shadowsphere) to take centre stage.

The big hall faded into darkness, before a single spotlight lit up the man we had all come to hear. Standing at the front of the stage, Shadow talked a little bit about the times he has been here in the past, and the type of music we would be treated to tonight. “I don’t play the sort of music you would hear at a wedding or at a stag night. I don’t do mash-ups of top ten hits while doing this for an hour,” he adds, fist-pumping like a champ.

The Shadowsphere is a spherical DJ booth that completely encloses the DJ while the exterior displays moving pictures. You know, like your television – except it’s perfectly round, there is a dude playing records inside it, and people have paid $80 to come watch it with you.

The sphere is also backed by a large screen which is also part of the show’s visuals. Used together, they form one of the greatest visual displays you will be lucky to ever lay eyes on.

As Shadow enters the sphere, a slow drum beats starts his set. The sphere is lit up to look like a Death Star-esque spaceship. It starts to spin, slowly at first, before ramping itself up to warp speed. With the rest of the hall still in darkness, it creates the illusion that we have all just blasted off into space, a very fitting start for the set to come. Shadow wasted no time in getting down to business scratch-wise.

Whilst on the subject of cutting, one of the night’s best visuals came during Walkie Talkie. The Sphere flashed up images of Gaga, Beiber and Fergie (amongst other deserving victims), before a huge chainsaw came crashing through the ball, sending heads flying and blood splattering all over the sphere. A cheap laugh, but effective as all hell, and it looked incredible. Blood and celebrity death fantasies aside, the musical highlight from this opening part of the set was definitely a sped-up remix of The Pharcyde’s Pack The Pipe.

The sounds being produced from inside the Sphere ranged from heavy rock riffs, right through to ambient, mellow grooves. During the slower songs the Sphere rotated around until its entrance was facing the crowd, giving the audience a chance to see Shadow working his magic (and maybe to prove he was actually in there). The sphere then spun back to where it began and The Outsider mixed into March Of Death, a track which features Rage Against The Machine vocalist Zach De La Rocha spitting the lyrics with his usual venom.

The tempo then rose along with seemingly every set of hands in the building, as Shadow had dropped one of his better known tracks Six Days. Enuff featuring Q-Tip was soon followed by the coolest notes to ever find their way out of the pipes, Organ Donor, which he used to close out the set.

Shadow stopped the show to give a brief thank you to everyone who turned out. He then went back into Organ Donor briefly as he mixed it into the first song of his encore. One of the slower songs of the night would see one of the best uses of the visual effects at their disposal. The Shadowsphere turned into a snow-globe, and with the help of the visuals on the back screen looked as though it was floating through various backgrounds.

Accompanied by the slower tempo track it was quite a haunting image that would no doubt last with a lot of the audience. It was chased by one of the nights most impressive displays of scratching during You Can’t Go Home Again.

To hear someone with so much control over what he is doing on the decks is an absolute treat. Shadow once again showed why many consider him the king. Coupled with the incredible visual display, this really was a mind-blowing set. I have seen Shadow before, but last Saturday night is the one that will stick in the memory – and the one I will refer to when asked about him from now on.