Midway through this special (£20 supplement) Great Escape show, DJ Shadow switched off his decks and picked up the microphone.

He apologised for his 11-year absence from Brighton, revealed a new album on the way six years after The Outsider and confessed he’d “been holed up working hard to advance things”.

The evidence was on show: he spoke from a spaceball/ golf ball/Death Star, planted in the middle of the stage, in front of a giant cinema-style screen. It was a set unlike anything anyone will have witnessed, with projections and animations cast on to the iron globe to create a 3D show.

This was the Shadowsphere, best viewed from down in the pit rather than up with the Gods, which the everyday American, with baseball cap, low-slung baggy jeans and Yankees hoodie, has just built on the road in the US.

Firstly, the audience was a bowling ball rolling down a lane, then a football, then inside a computer game navigating platforms and levels. Later it was cast into space, a mixer controlling a turntable and wheeling around a supermarket, running the aisles of consumption.

Visibly moved by applause after some hefty d ’n’b remixes from the best of Endtroducing, snippets from The Private Press, Shadow was quick to direct attention to digital wizard Ben Stokes, who sat square-eyed staring into a wall of monitors.

Stokes’s biggest achievement was in taking the audience’s eyes on the journey Shadow’s subtle mixing took the ears. He matched the San Franciscan who carefully shifted mood with a sensitivity few other DJs could match.

Music “gets me out of bed and puts me to sleep,” said Shadow before his encore mixed butt-clenching bass with tender blues, turning angular guitars into grime techno.

Though his later work is less immediate – new EP I Gotta Rok is hair metal over stomping beats, minus classic melody – a true pioneer’s mantra is to evolve. His music may be more difficult, but Shadow never looks back.