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Sasha (DJ)
Encyclopedia
Sasha is a Welsh
DJ
and record producer. Sasha began his career playing acid house
dance music in the late 1980s. He partnered with fellow DJ John Digweed
in 1993, touring internationally and producing a series of mixes (compilations of other artists work played in a continuous fashion).
Sasha has produced multiple UK-charting singles and has remix
ed tracks for artists such as Madonna
and The Chemical Brothers
. His remix of Felix da Housecat
's "Watching Cars Go By" earned him a 2004 Grammy nomination. Sasha's remixing and production often combine electronic music genres, making it difficult for critics to pinpoint his musical style, including on his debut album of original work, Airdrawndagger
.
After achieving success as a producer and DJ, Sasha worked with younger DJs and producers such as BT and James Zabiela
, influencing their musical styles and techniques. His use of live audio engineering
equipment helped popularise technological innovations among DJs who formerly relied on records
and turntables
. Despite the changing trends in electronic dance music, Sasha continues to perform in large dance venues. In 2007, he formed a record label with Renaissance Records called emFire, which is the exclusive outlet for his new music.
on September 4, 1969, but spent most of his youth with his mother in the Welsh town of Sandycroft, Flintshire
, North Wales
. Sasha's mother, Madame Pyke, taught French to Marc, Suzanne, Laura and Emily (amongst others) at Hawarden High School. Sasha's early musical taste was primarily Top 40 pop music like The The
and The Police
. After an "idyllic childhood", he passed the entrance exam for Epsom College at age 17. However, he did not like Epsom and left before completing his Advanced Level (an academic qualification in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
). Instead of continuing his schooling, Sasha moved to Bangor to live with his father and stepmother. Sasha's stepmother forced him to take piano lessons which, although he disliked them at the time, Sasha ultimately found to be beneficial to his music career.
Sasha became aware of electronic dance music in 1988 at The Haçienda
, a Manchester
dance venue. Drawn to the rough sound of acid house
music and the rebellious attitude he associated with it, he visited Manchester weekly and soon moved to nearby Disley
. Sasha purchased many acid house records and began to teach himself how to mix
. A local DJ at a club Sasha frequented announced that he was looking for other DJs to travel with him on a regional tour. Sasha volunteered and made his first live appearance in nearby Stockport
. Sasha recalled of his debut, "I'd never even touched a Technics
: I thought the pitch control
was the volume, I didn't even know where to plug my headphones in! I'm sure I was absolutely horrendous."
Sasha soon found himself in debt due to low-paying performances and the many records he bought. To finance his record collection, he performed at illegal warehouse rave
s in the Blackburn and Blackpool
areas. With the assistance of another local DJ, Jon DaSilva
, Sasha secured work at The Haçienda, where he learned key mixing (matching melodic keys) from DaSilva and refined his ability to beatmatch (to synchronize the beats of two simultaneously playing records). Though he enjoyed playing at The Haçienda, in 1990 Sasha left for a club called Shelley's Laserdrome in Stoke-on-Trent
. There, he established part of his signature sound by mixing euphoric Acid House music with Italian piano house and emotional a cappella
s. Because of his increased popularity and visibility at Shelley's, Mixmag
featured Sasha on its first cover, under the headline "SASHA MANIA - THE FIRST DJ PINUP?". While continuing to DJ, Sasha began to produce several of his own dance tracks. This, he later noted, was contrary to the career paths of many successful DJs, for whom it was more common to start out as producers. Upon signing a recording contract
, he also set up an entire recording studio
at the same time, which led to a "painful learning curve" at the outset. He released his first single, "Appolonia", under the name BM:Ex with producer Tom Frederikse
on Union City Recordings
. After DJing at Shelley's for several years, Sasha left his position because of increasing gang violence in and around the club. As a result of his growing reputation, Sasha was offered work in several London
and Australian clubs. He accepted, instead, a spot in the DJ rotation at Renaissance
a club night started by Geoff Oakes at Venue 44 in Mansfield, England.
Later in 1993, Sasha produced "Together", his first single under the name Sasha. "Together", which he produced with Danny Campbell for Pete Tong
's FFRR, peaked on the UK Singles Chart
at #57. With this success, Sasha began a series of records for Deconstruction Records
with the singles "Higher Ground" and "Magic" (for which Digweed produced a remix) and The Qat Collection
with Frederikse and vocalist Sam Mollison
.
DJ John Digweed
. Sasha and Digweed honed their DJing skills, often performing in tandem and focusing on track selection and technical mixing abilities. Renaissance was pleased with their performances, and had the duo compile the triple-CD mix album Renaissance - The Mix Collection
, releasing it on the club's own Renaissance Records label. The album featured tracks from such artists as Leftfield
, Fluke
, and 2 Bad Mice
, and original productions and remixes from Sasha and Digweed. The Mix Collection was released soon after Sasha's departure from Renaissance in April 1994. Following his success at Renaissance, Sasha was again featured on Mixmag with the tagline
"SON OF GOD?", though he resented the accolade. After touring together for two years, the duo became "true superstars" with the release of their double CD Northern Exposure
on mega-label Ministry of Sound
. Around this time, Sasha began a recurring mentorship and partnership with fellow producer BT with the album Ima. As well as providing guidance for BT, Sasha produced a "euphoric" and "introspective" 42-minute rendition of the album which formed the centrepiece of the UK release and appeared as a "bonus" second disc on the US release. He continued to advance his own production work by pairing with vocalist Maria Nayler
to produce the single "Be as One", which reached #17 on the UK singles chart.
In 1997, Ministry of Sound released Northern Exposure 2
, Sasha and Digweed's next double-CD entry in their Northern Exposure series. To support the album, the duo toured internationally, and in the process helped to define the sound of trance music in the late 1990s. After extensive touring, Digweed and Sasha took up residency at New York City
's famous Twilo
nightclub, where they would DJ for the entire night. In 1998, the two released separate mix albums on the Boxed
label, as part of the Global Underground
series: Digweed's Global Underground 006: Sydney, and Sasha's Global Underground 009: San Francisco, which drew from his experience touring on the West Coast of the United States
. Both DJs formed their own record labels that year: Sasha created Excession Records and Digweed started Bedrock Records
. Excession released fewer than ten records, the last in 1998; the experience, however, led Sasha to found the management agency "Excession: The Agency LTD." Excession remains a booking agency for many DJs, including Hybrid, Nick Warren
, and Steve Lawler
.
Sasha reached a more mainstream audience with his remixes of Madonna
's "Ray of Light
" and GusGus
's "Purple" for those artists' single releases. His success in pop music led him to score
the music for the PlayStation
video game Wipeout 3
. In 1999, Sasha and Digweed reunited in the studio to record their third edition in the Northern Exposure series, Northern Exposure: Expeditions
. In addition to mixing and DJing, Sasha joined Charlie May of Spooky
to produce the Xpander EP, the title track of which many clubbers still view as "one of the greatest trance tracks of all time". He used the title track as a centerpiece for Global Underground 013: Ibiza, his second Global Underground release. Sasha continued his collaborations with BT on the track "Ride", which was released as a single on Yoshitoshi Records
and on BT's Movement in Still Life
. Soon after, he worked with Underworld
's Darren Emerson
on the single "Scorchio", Sasha's first charting single in four years. In between touring and producing original material, Sasha and Digweed released the mix album Communicate
in 2000, prompting them to temporarily leave their Twilo residency for a promotional tour of the United States. Communicate had mixed reviews: Spin
stated that despite a "few stellar moments, [Communicate] is ultimately a let-down". LAUNCHcast
, too, described Communicate as "boring and lackluster...stalled in a monochrome world of dead beats".
During the late 1990s, the increased popularity and visibility of "superstar DJs" led to the creation of superclub
s such as Liverpool's Cream
and Sheffield's Gatecrasher
. By 2003, however, electronic dance music clubs languished. The Guardian
s pop critic, Alexis Petridis, attributed the "terminal decline" of dance music to its over-commercialisation by big-name DJs, such as Sasha, and to their demands for increased fees for performances. Though dance music had been declared "dead" by many in the dance industry, Sasha continued to tour—despite the closing of many superclubs, including his resident club Twilo in May 2001.
and opening act Jimmy Van M
, the tour covered 31 cities and played to 85,000 people. The appearances, complete with laser shows and video production, were more akin to rock concerts than to typical DJ events. This development was new to the DJing scene, and compelled other DJs to host similar concerts. A DVD of performance highlights, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage was released as Sasha & John Digweed present Delta Heavy
by System Recordings
. Ben Turner, creator of the DanceStar awards, retrospectively described the Delta Heavy tour as "a landmark moment for electronic music". Though the duo of Sasha and Digweed never explicitly split up, demanding schedules and frequent independent touring prevented any substantial collaboration for a long period after Delta Heavy.
artist Junkie XL
on the single "Breezer". Junkie XL, along with Charlie May, also assisted Sasha on his second album of original material, Airdrawndagger
. Airdrawndagger took several years to produce due to Sasha's desire for the album to be "as near to perfection as possible." That March, Sasha suffered a perforated eardrum in a traffic accident, further delaying the album's production. Though the accident temporarily impaired his hearing, he drew inspiration for the album from his ordeal. Airdrawndagger was finally released, in August 2002, to much fanfare. However, the album was "received with a lot of head scratching", according to Sasha, which he attributed to its unexpected mix of genres. The album did not feature the heavier "club sound" of Sasha's previous mix albums, bearing a closer resemblance to ambient music
. Airdrawndagger generally received favorable reviews, though critics noted that it was not as consistent and well produced as his DJ mixes. Sasha himself described it as "a selfish, slightly self-indulgent record", though he maintains that he is "happy with it to this day". Some critics, however, called it "sleepy"; E!Online described it as being "more in league with Yanni
than Moby
". To encourage listeners' interest, Sasha held an amateur remix contest for the album's first single, "Wavy Gravy". Due to the contest's success, Sasha released all the tracks from Airdrawndagger on his website, so that fans could download and create their own versions.
After the release of Airdrawndagger, Sasha took the young DJ James Zabiela
"under his wing". He introduced Zabiela to the CDJ1000
turntable, and signed Zabiela to the Excession talent agency. The two toured the United States together, which extended Sasha's influence to already-popular American DJs such as Kimball Collins.
In 2004, Sasha signed with Global Underground
to produce another mix album. However, he found the process of creating a standard mix album unrewarding, and decided to apply his production and DJing skills to a mix compilation that resembled a "real" album—that is, one featuring original material. Sasha's next studio album, Involver
, was "a fusion of mix album and production record", consisting entirely of Sasha's reworkings of tracks by other artists. "I tried to take all the separate sounds to all the tracks [and recombine them]", he later explained, "and it allowed me to mix the tracks together on a much deeper level." He accomplished this by sequencing
the album using Ableton Live
and Logic Pro
. Ableton Live is a music loop
-based software package that Sasha uses to engineer tracks in real-time, whereas he used Logic Pro primarily for premeditated edits to audio tracks.
In 2005, Sasha produced his next mix album, Fundacion NYC
, based on his nights DJing in New York at the Crobar club. Fundacion NYC received positive reviews for its originality, though JIVE Magazine
found it "too complicated for the ear". Sasha is pleased with the album, and plans to make a series of Fundacion albums. The next year, Sasha released 10,000 copies of a June 2006 DJ set for sale using Instant Live
, making him the first DJ to use Instant Live's licensing and publishing services. In August 2007, Sasha announced the formation of his record label, Emfire, which will be the exclusive outlet for his new material in both vinyl and digital formats. Its first release was"COMA", a collaborative track by a group of the same name which features Sasha, Barry Jamieson, Charlie May, and Duncan Forbes. While continuing to regularly DJ, Sasha began work on another Involver mix and the next Fundacion mix. Sasha's Invol2ver
was released in September 2008.
, Brisbane
, and Melbourne
as well as numerous tour dates throughout 2007. In 2008, Sasha and Digweed kicked off an American tour with a performance at the Winter Music Conference
. The duo played at mainly larger venues on the weekends and smaller (750-1000 people) shows on weekdays. Sasha described their music as "driving and dark" with "a little throwback of Twilo sounds". The duo now perform together annually at the Winter Music Conference.
Sasha runs a music studio and lives in New York City, and maintains a house in London. He brings his wife with him on his frequent tours. Sasha finds the constant touring to be physically tiring, though he also feels that he thrives on it. While fans may regard Sasha to be a DJ "hero", he is uneasy with fame; Sasha considers himself "shy at heart" and is typically uncomfortable discussing his personal life. He has mentioned on numerous occasions that he is so busy with DJing and production that he rarely has any free time. However, he enjoys watching football
, cooking, and sampling the cuisine of the countries he visits.
The movie "New Emissions of Light & Sound" won the Best Original Score at the X-Dance Film Festival. The score was made up of new and previously unreleased tracks.
Influenced by the early sound of The Haçienda, Sasha began his career playing records of the rough, danceable genre of acid house. By the early 1990s, he had moved towards a more dark European house music
style, though by the time of his Shelley's residency he had begun to experiment more with American house. His tastes further developed as he moved to Renaissance, and he began to incorporate the pop-based sounds of Moby
, Spooky
, and Leftfield
. Sasha's second Digweed collaboration, 1997's Northern Exposure, was described as "epic house", and subsequent releases featured the spacey and atmospheric progressive trance sound of artists such as Sven Väth
, Matt Darey
, Tilt
, and Armin Van Buuren. A rhythmic and bassy progressive house influence distinguished his Xpander EP and the mix albums of the late 1990s. At the time, Sasha's music rotation included records by artists such as Space Manoeuvres, BT, and Breeder
, and Sander Kleinenberg's single "My Lexicon".
With the 2000 album Communicate, the duo's work moved towards a deeper and darker house music sound. The album featured tracks by Morel
, Mainline
, and Jimmy Van M
. The focus shifted from the melodic themes of previous releases in favour of a stronger emphasis on the bassline. The Delta Heavy Tour and Airdrawndagger
marked a dramatic shift in style, and reflected the influences of relaxed ambient
and breakbeat
music on Sasha's work. These influences inspired the album's strong melodies, occasional breakbeat loops, and limited use of percussion. Involver was primarily a fusion of the musical style of house and ambient breakbeat music characterised by UNKLE
and Lostep
. With 2005's Fundacion, Sasha's style was mostly progressive house and electro-house music, with work by James Holden
, Tiefschwarz
, and Swayzak
. With his success in progressive house, Sasha has commented that he feels people try to "pigeon-hole" him into playing that genre. Rather than calling it progressive house, Sasha considers his most recent material to be between house, trance, and breaks, though he has stated that he prefers not to associate himself with a specific genre of music.
Sasha attributes his success to his technical skill and ability to "connect with his dancers". During performances, he balances new and experimental material, while ensuring that "the party is still rockin". His spontaneity carries over to studio work; he typically has only a vague idea of the track listing when beginning work on a new mix album. Because of this, his albums never turn out quite as he expects.
Sasha is known for applying new music technologies to both his studio and live work. Both Sasha and Digweed used Pro Tools on Macintosh
computers when mixing their compilation albums, and used turntables and records during live performances. For their remixes, however, they used an Atari ST
—an obsolete personal computer
from the early 1990s—with Notator, a music sequencer
used for arranging audio tracks. For more recent albums such as Fundacion NYC, Sasha used Ableton Live for sequencing, partially because of Pro Tools' higher price. In live performances up to the late 1990s, Sasha performed exclusively using records. Before he started using the CDJ1000
, a "turntable" used for CDs, he had his digital music specially cut to acetate records
before each tour. Once he integrated CDs into his live act, Sasha operated CDJ1000s with Allen & Heath
mixers and FireworX. While he is now known for heavily utilizing audio technologies, Sasha was one of the last DJs to begin using CDs in live performance.
Sasha began DJing with Ableton Live in his live act as well, using it in tandem with turntables. Having explored its functionality, Sasha found that he could perform entirely through Ableton Live. He then co-developed the Maven controller
, which he uses as a physical interface to the Live software. (DJing with a mouse
alone, he has said, is "not going to look right or feel right".) Fundacion NYC was the first album on which he regularly used the Maven controller. During DJ sets, clubbers often believe Sasha is playing new, unheard remixes; in fact, he is often playing modifications of tracks created in Ableton. Sasha most often uses the built-in Ableton plugins, preferring their superior stability and performance over third party plugins. For the first public performance of Involver material, he used a PowerBook
running Ableton, but has since shifted to a setup that includes an iMac G5
and Ableton Live. Despite Sasha's insistence that Ableton Live allows for greater creativity and spontaneity, "vinyl purists" have accused him of taking much of the challenge and mystique out of DJing by using software in performances.
The Internet
has affected how Sasha obtains and uses tracks for performance. While he once hunted through record shops for new records on a regular basis, Sasha now regularly receives new tracks from producers and labels via the Internet. These tracks, which number in the hundreds each week, are edited by Sasha and others for use in his live DJ sets. He still buys hundreds of records on vinyl, which are then recorded and converted into music files prior to being edited in Ableton by his team of engineers.
every year since 1997, placing first in 2000. At the annual Winter Music Conference
, Sasha has won the "Best Techno/Trance 12" award (1999) for the Xpander EP, and "Best CD Compilation" awards for Global Underground: Ibiza (1999, 2000) and Involver (2004). He was also nominated in the categories "Best European DJ" (2004) and "Best Remixer". At the 1999 Ericsson Muzik Awards, he received an award for "Outstanding Contributions to Dance Music". Sasha was nominated as the top DJ in his genre every year since 2000 in the DJ Awards
, but did not win. However, in 2008, he was selected as the best DJ in the progressive house category.
In 2005, the Grammy committee debated whether Involver was eligible for nomination as Best Electronic/Dance Album
. The Recording Academy decided that the album was eligible, but Involver did not receive a nomination. Sasha did receive a Grammy nomination for his remix of Felix da Housecat
's "Watching Cars Go By", which was featured on Involver.
DJ Mixes/Compilations
DVD
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
DJ
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
and record producer. Sasha began his career playing acid house
Acid house
Acid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
dance music in the late 1980s. He partnered with fellow DJ John Digweed
John Digweed
John Digweed is an English DJ, record producer and acclaimed actor.-Biography:John Digweed began DJing around age 4...
in 1993, touring internationally and producing a series of mixes (compilations of other artists work played in a continuous fashion).
Sasha has produced multiple UK-charting singles and has remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
ed tracks for artists such as Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
and The Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers are a British electronic music duo comprising Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons. Originating in Manchester in 1991, along with The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method, and fellow acts, they were pioneers at bringing the big beat genre to the forefront of pop culture.- Background...
. His remix of Felix da Housecat
Felix da Housecat
Felix da Housecat is an American DJ and record producer, mostly known for house music and electroclash. His name was inspired by Felix the Cat....
's "Watching Cars Go By" earned him a 2004 Grammy nomination. Sasha's remixing and production often combine electronic music genres, making it difficult for critics to pinpoint his musical style, including on his debut album of original work, Airdrawndagger
Airdrawndagger
Airdrawndagger is an album by Sasha. It was released in 2002 by Kinetic Records and BMG. It also featured appearances from Charlie May and Junkie XL. The term "air-drawn dagger" was used in Macbeth to characterize an emotional outburst. The album has a very different sound from Sasha's other...
.
After achieving success as a producer and DJ, Sasha worked with younger DJs and producers such as BT and James Zabiela
James Zabiela
James Zabiela is a DJ and producer from Southampton in the United Kingdom. In his early years his signature style was a fusion of Breakbeat and House music, more recently however, he is regarded as a Tech House DJ although his use of Breakbeat music is still key to the more flashy parts of his sets...
, influencing their musical styles and techniques. His use of live audio engineering
Audio engineering
An audio engineer, also called audio technician, audio technologist or sound technician, is a specialist in a skilled trade that deals with the use of machinery and equipment for the recording, mixing and reproduction of sounds. The field draws on many artistic and vocational areas, including...
equipment helped popularise technological innovations among DJs who formerly relied on records
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
and turntables
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
. Despite the changing trends in electronic dance music, Sasha continues to perform in large dance venues. In 2007, he formed a record label with Renaissance Records called emFire, which is the exclusive outlet for his new music.
Early years
Sasha was born in Bangor, WalesBangor, Wales
Bangor is a city in Gwynedd, north west Wales, and one of the smallest cities in Britain. It is a university city with a population of 13,725 at the 2001 census, not including around 10,000 students at Bangor University. Including nearby Menai Bridge on Anglesey, which does not however form part of...
on September 4, 1969, but spent most of his youth with his mother in the Welsh town of Sandycroft, Flintshire
Flintshire
Flintshire is a county in north-east Wales. It borders Denbighshire, Wrexham and the English county of Cheshire. It is named after the historic county of Flintshire, which had notably different borders...
, North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
. Sasha's mother, Madame Pyke, taught French to Marc, Suzanne, Laura and Emily (amongst others) at Hawarden High School. Sasha's early musical taste was primarily Top 40 pop music like The The
The The
The The are an English musical and multimedia group that have been active in various forms since 1979, with singer/songwriter Matt Johnson being the only constant band member.-Early years :...
and The Police
The Police
The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting , Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland...
. After an "idyllic childhood", he passed the entrance exam for Epsom College at age 17. However, he did not like Epsom and left before completing his Advanced Level (an academic qualification in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
). Instead of continuing his schooling, Sasha moved to Bangor to live with his father and stepmother. Sasha's stepmother forced him to take piano lessons which, although he disliked them at the time, Sasha ultimately found to be beneficial to his music career.
Sasha became aware of electronic dance music in 1988 at The Haçienda
The Haçienda
Fac 51 Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, England. It became most famous during the "Madchester" years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the 1990s it was labelled the most famous club in the world by Newsweek magazine...
, a Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
dance venue. Drawn to the rough sound of acid house
Acid house
Acid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...
music and the rebellious attitude he associated with it, he visited Manchester weekly and soon moved to nearby Disley
Disley
Disley is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is located on the very edge of the Peak District, in the Goyt Valley, very close to the county boundary with Derbyshire at New Mills, and south of Stockport, Greater...
. Sasha purchased many acid house records and began to teach himself how to mix
DJ mix
A DJ mix or DJ mixset is a sequence of musical tracks typically mixed together to appear as one continuous track. When a DJ mix or DJ mixset is recorded onto some medium, it is often referred to as a mix tape...
. A local DJ at a club Sasha frequented announced that he was looking for other DJs to travel with him on a regional tour. Sasha volunteered and made his first live appearance in nearby Stockport
Stockport
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...
. Sasha recalled of his debut, "I'd never even touched a Technics
Technics (brand)
1960s:*SX-601 Electronic Organ — an origin of Technics SX keyboard series, the result of cooperative works of National Electronic Organ Company and Ace Tone...
: I thought the pitch control
Pitch control
A variable speed pitch control is a control on an audio device such as a turntable, tape recorder, or CD player that allows the operator to deviate from a standard speed . The latter term "vari-speed" is more commonly used for tape decks, particularly in the UK...
was the volume, I didn't even know where to plug my headphones in! I'm sure I was absolutely horrendous."
Sasha soon found himself in debt due to low-paying performances and the many records he bought. To finance his record collection, he performed at illegal warehouse rave
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
s in the Blackburn and Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...
areas. With the assistance of another local DJ, Jon DaSilva
Jon DaSilva
Jon Dasilva is a producer and DJ. He has had releases on labels such as Soma and Deconstruction. He is also well known for his time as a resident DJ at The Haçienda. While there, he mentored Sasha in the early 1990s.-External links:*Official Website**...
, Sasha secured work at The Haçienda, where he learned key mixing (matching melodic keys) from DaSilva and refined his ability to beatmatch (to synchronize the beats of two simultaneously playing records). Though he enjoyed playing at The Haçienda, in 1990 Sasha left for a club called Shelley's Laserdrome in Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
. There, he established part of his signature sound by mixing euphoric Acid House music with Italian piano house and emotional a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
s. Because of his increased popularity and visibility at Shelley's, Mixmag
Mixmag
Mixmag is a British dance music and clubbing magazine. It styles itself as "the world's biggest selling dance music magazine", with an Audit Bureau of Circulations audited circulation of approximately 21,250...
featured Sasha on its first cover, under the headline "SASHA MANIA - THE FIRST DJ PINUP?". While continuing to DJ, Sasha began to produce several of his own dance tracks. This, he later noted, was contrary to the career paths of many successful DJs, for whom it was more common to start out as producers. Upon signing a recording contract
Recording contract
A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...
, he also set up an entire recording studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
at the same time, which led to a "painful learning curve" at the outset. He released his first single, "Appolonia", under the name BM:Ex with producer Tom Frederikse
Tom Frederikse
Tom Frederikse is an electronic music producer who has performed remix work for Sasha in the early-1990s on Sasha's single "Appolonia" as well as working with him as "QAT" on records including The Qat Collection. He has also done work for D:Ream other large labels such as Atlantic Records and...
on Union City Recordings
Union City Recordings
Union City Recordings was an electronic music record label set up by Circa records in 1991/2 from their operations in West London. The label was managed by Rob Manly and specialised in deep house music which was popular in clubs at the time. The label's catalogue ran to 29 releases across the...
. After DJing at Shelley's for several years, Sasha left his position because of increasing gang violence in and around the club. As a result of his growing reputation, Sasha was offered work in several London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Australian clubs. He accepted, instead, a spot in the DJ rotation at Renaissance
Renaissance (club)
Renaissance is a British electronic dance music club brand and record label. Renaissance was started by Geoff Oakes at Venue 44 in Mansfield, England in 1992. Renaissance was Geoff Oakes' antidote to the sci-fi imagery and dressed down clubbers of the 'rave' scene .In 1993 Renaissance moved to a...
a club night started by Geoff Oakes at Venue 44 in Mansfield, England.
Later in 1993, Sasha produced "Together", his first single under the name Sasha. "Together", which he produced with Danny Campbell for Pete Tong
Pete Tong
Peter "Pete" Tong is an English DJ who works for BBC Radio 1. He is known worldwide by fans of electronic music for hosting programmes such as Essential Mix and Essential Selection on the radio service, which can be heard through Internet radio streams, for his record label FFRR Records, and for...
's FFRR, peaked on the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
at #57. With this success, Sasha began a series of records for Deconstruction Records
Deconstruction Records
Deconstruction Records is a record label founded in 1987 by Pete Hadfield and Keith Blackhurst in the United Kingdom. Distribution was via label deals with Parlophone Records, for acts such as K-Klass and Bassheads), and RCA Records for everybody else....
with the singles "Higher Ground" and "Magic" (for which Digweed produced a remix) and The Qat Collection
The Qat Collection
The Qat Collection is a 1994 album by Sasha and Tom Frederikse featuring vocals from Sam Mollison.-Original version:# "Minimal Qat" – 9:42# "Magic" – 12:33# "Animal Qat" – 13:09# "Higher Ground" – 10:13# "Vegetable Qat" – 10:55...
with Frederikse and vocalist Sam Mollison
Sam Mollison
Sam Mollison is an electronic music producer and vocalist. He has collaborated with Sasha for his release of "Magic" and The Qat Collection. He has also had his own work released on FFRR and INCredible....
.
Digweed era
In early 1993, Sasha partnered with fellow RenaissanceRenaissance Recordings
Renaissance Recordings was a British record label, founded by the club Renaissance in 1994. In went into administration in 2008 and the back catalogue was sold to Phoenix Music International Ltd.-Series:Current*3D*Digital*Masters Series...
DJ John Digweed
John Digweed
John Digweed is an English DJ, record producer and acclaimed actor.-Biography:John Digweed began DJing around age 4...
. Sasha and Digweed honed their DJing skills, often performing in tandem and focusing on track selection and technical mixing abilities. Renaissance was pleased with their performances, and had the duo compile the triple-CD mix album Renaissance - The Mix Collection
Renaissance - The Mix Collection
Renaissance: The Mix Collection is the first mix CD set by Sasha & John Digweed.-Overview and Significance to History of Mixed Dance Albums:To this day, Renaissance: The Mix Collection is considered the first true fully mixed dance album...
, releasing it on the club's own Renaissance Records label. The album featured tracks from such artists as Leftfield
Leftfield
Leftfield are a British duo of electronica artists and record producers, namely Paul Daley and Neil Barnes, who formed in 1990 in London, England...
, Fluke
Fluke (band)
Fluke are an English electronic music group formed in the late 1980s by Mike Bryant, Jon Fugler and Mike Tournier with Julian Nugent as the band's manager...
, and 2 Bad Mice
2 Bad Mice
2 Bad Mice formed in England in 1991, and was composed of Sean O'Keeffe, Simon Colebrooke, and Rob Playford, the latter the owner of the Moving Shadow record label. 2 Bad Mice were credited as among the first UK hardcore acts to begin incorporating breakbeats into their style...
, and original productions and remixes from Sasha and Digweed. The Mix Collection was released soon after Sasha's departure from Renaissance in April 1994. Following his success at Renaissance, Sasha was again featured on Mixmag with the tagline
Tagline
A tagline is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product , or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product...
"SON OF GOD?", though he resented the accolade. After touring together for two years, the duo became "true superstars" with the release of their double CD Northern Exposure
Northern Exposure (album)
Northern Exposure is a 1996 mix album by DJs Sasha & John Digweed. There is both a British edition released by Ministry of Sound and an American edition released by Ultra Records...
on mega-label Ministry of Sound
Ministry of Sound
Ministry of Sound London, commonly referred to as simply Ministry of Sound or MoS, is a nightclub based in London, United Kingdom and an associated record label. It was ranked fourth in the 2010 DJ Magazine top 100 clubs poll 2010. As well as the nightclub in London, there is another in Egypt and...
. Around this time, Sasha began a recurring mentorship and partnership with fellow producer BT with the album Ima. As well as providing guidance for BT, Sasha produced a "euphoric" and "introspective" 42-minute rendition of the album which formed the centrepiece of the UK release and appeared as a "bonus" second disc on the US release. He continued to advance his own production work by pairing with vocalist Maria Nayler
Maria Nayler
Maria Nayler is a British female singer. In the early 1990s, she was part of Ultraviolet who released two singles "Kites" and "I Wish That" . In 1995, she appeared as featured vocalist on Sasha's trance track "Be As One"...
to produce the single "Be as One", which reached #17 on the UK singles chart.
In 1997, Ministry of Sound released Northern Exposure 2
Northern Exposure 2
Northern Exposure 2 is a mix album by Sasha & John Digweed released in 1997. In the United Kingdom, it was released by Ministry of Sound as a double CD package, whereas in the United States, it was on Ultra Records as two separate CDs — a "West Coast Edition" and an "East Coast Edition".-Disc 1:...
, Sasha and Digweed's next double-CD entry in their Northern Exposure series. To support the album, the duo toured internationally, and in the process helped to define the sound of trance music in the late 1990s. After extensive touring, Digweed and Sasha took up residency at New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's famous Twilo
Twilo
Twilo was an American nightclub in operation from 1995 to 2001 in New York City and from 2006 to 2007 in Miami. The New York location at 530 West 27th Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan regularly attracted a crowd of thousands to its warehouse-like dance floor...
nightclub, where they would DJ for the entire night. In 1998, the two released separate mix albums on the Boxed
Boxed
Boxed was a record label which has released around forty mix albums from DJs such as John Digweed, Nick Warren, and Danny Howells. They are most known for their Global Underground series. After stopping releases due to financial difficulties in 2003, Global Underground Ltd...
label, as part of the Global Underground
Global Underground
Global Underground is a music label founded in 1996 by Andy Horsfield and James Todd. The label symbolizes the international explosion of dance music during the 1990s and first manifesto for high-end DJs such as Sasha, Paul Oakenfold, John Digweed, Danny Tenaglia, Nick Warren, Dave Seaman, Darren...
series: Digweed's Global Underground 006: Sydney, and Sasha's Global Underground 009: San Francisco, which drew from his experience touring on the West Coast of the United States
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
. Both DJs formed their own record labels that year: Sasha created Excession Records and Digweed started Bedrock Records
Bedrock Records
thumb|200px|Bedrock RecordsBedrock Records is an English record label for trance, house and techno started by Nick Muir and John Digweed.Its name comes from a nightclub in London that is also called Bedrock. Bedrock Records has released many singles from artists such as Astro & Glyde, Brancaccio &...
. Excession released fewer than ten records, the last in 1998; the experience, however, led Sasha to found the management agency "Excession: The Agency LTD." Excession remains a booking agency for many DJs, including Hybrid, Nick Warren
Nick Warren
Nick Warren is an English house DJ and producer. He is well-known for his eight albums released in the Global Underground series and as a member of the duo Way Out West...
, and Steve Lawler
Steve Lawler
Steve Lawler is a British house music producer and DJ born in Birmingham, England. He has held residences at many popular dance clubs such as Space, The End and Twilo. Because of his successful performances at Space in Ibiza, he has been nicknamed "King of Space". Lawler has released several mix...
.
Sasha reached a more mainstream audience with his remixes of Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
's "Ray of Light
Ray of Light (song)
A high-speed electronic dance song, "Ray of Light" has received stylistic comparisons to rave, psychedelic and acid music. The track contains strong techno elements, as well as disco, trance and Eurodance influences, and it sees Madonna deepen her dance roots and go for a more electronic sound...
" and GusGus
GusGus
GusGus are a band from Reykjavík, Iceland. They were founded in 1995. Their discography consists of eight studio albums and one live record.- History :...
's "Purple" for those artists' single releases. His success in pop music led him to score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
the music for the PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
video game Wipeout 3
Wipeout 3
Wipeout 3, released as Wip3out in Europe and Japan, is a futuristic racing video game developed and published by Psygnosis exclusively for the Sony PlayStation. The title is the fourth game in the Wipeout series, and was released in Europe and North America in September 1999. The game was...
. In 1999, Sasha and Digweed reunited in the studio to record their third edition in the Northern Exposure series, Northern Exposure: Expeditions
Northern Exposure: Expeditions
Northern Exposure: Expeditions is a 1999 progressive trance mix album by Sasha and John Digweed. The UK release was featured on INCredible whereas the United States edition was released by Ultra Records...
. In addition to mixing and DJing, Sasha joined Charlie May of Spooky
Spooky
Spooky is a British house/techno duo consisting of Duncan Forbes and Charlie May. They debuted with Gargantuan in 1993 after signing to Guerilla Records. In 1995 and 1996 they released three EPs on their own Generic Records label, followed quickly in mid-1996 by their second album, Found Sound...
to produce the Xpander EP, the title track of which many clubbers still view as "one of the greatest trance tracks of all time". He used the title track as a centerpiece for Global Underground 013: Ibiza, his second Global Underground release. Sasha continued his collaborations with BT on the track "Ride", which was released as a single on Yoshitoshi Records
Yoshitoshi Records
Yoshitoshi Recordings is a dance music record label which is owned and operated by house producers Deep Dish. It was founded in 1994. While pigeonholed as a progressive label, its releases in fact cover a broad spectrum of modern dance music, reflecting the eclectic tastes of its owners...
and on BT's Movement in Still Life
Movement in Still Life
Movement in Still Life is the third album by electronica artist BT. Released, in the United Kingdom in 1999, with a modified version for the United States in 2000...
. Soon after, he worked with Underworld
Underworld (band)
Underworld are a British electronic group, and principal name under which duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have recorded together since 1980.- Early years: 1979–1986 :...
's Darren Emerson
Darren Emerson
Darren Emerson is a dance music DJ, and former member of the UK electronic music outfit, Underworld.-Career:Emerson began mixing Hip-Hop records at the age of 14, and by 16 was DJing regularly at local venues...
on the single "Scorchio", Sasha's first charting single in four years. In between touring and producing original material, Sasha and Digweed released the mix album Communicate
Communicate (mix album)
Communicate is a mix album by Sasha & John Digweed.-Disc one:#Jaimy & Kenny D. - "Like A Bitch" – 8:23#Eric Clapton - "Get Lost " – 6:04#Sven Väth - "Barbarella " – 10:11...
in 2000, prompting them to temporarily leave their Twilo residency for a promotional tour of the United States. Communicate had mixed reviews: Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
stated that despite a "few stellar moments, [Communicate] is ultimately a let-down". LAUNCHcast
LAUNCHcast
Yahoo! Music Radio is an Internet radio service offered by CBS Radio through Yahoo! Music. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré and Jeff Boulter, debuted on November 11, 1999, and was purchased by Yahoo! in October, 2001...
, too, described Communicate as "boring and lackluster...stalled in a monochrome world of dead beats".
During the late 1990s, the increased popularity and visibility of "superstar DJs" led to the creation of superclub
Superclub
Superclub is a term used to refer to a nightclub owned and managed by a dance music record label, such as The Haçienda club, which was owned by Factory Records...
s such as Liverpool's Cream
Cream (nightclub)
Cream, based at the Nation nightclub in Liverpool, is one of the best-known night clubs in the UK. Cream began life as a weekly house music night at Nation, and ran in this format for 10 years, from October 1992 to June 2002...
and Sheffield's Gatecrasher
Gatecrasher
Gatecrasher is an international clubbing brand made famous by the Gatecrasher dance music events held at the Gatecrasher One nightclub in Sheffield, England during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The event received awards such as "Club Of The Year" at the Ericsson Muzik Magazine Dance Awards in...
. By 2003, however, electronic dance music clubs languished. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
s pop critic, Alexis Petridis, attributed the "terminal decline" of dance music to its over-commercialisation by big-name DJs, such as Sasha, and to their demands for increased fees for performances. Though dance music had been declared "dead" by many in the dance industry, Sasha continued to tour—despite the closing of many superclubs, including his resident club Twilo in May 2001.
Delta Heavy Tour
After the closing of Twilo, Sasha and Digweed embarked on their ambitious Delta Heavy Tour of the United States in 2002. Featuring veteran tour producer Kevin LymanKevin Lyman
Kevin Lyman is creator of a touring music and extreme sports festival called the Warped Tour, the Taste of Chaos, and the Mayhem tours. He also is a partner at SideOneDummy Records. He owns 4FINI which annually produces the above-mentioned tours as well as produced past tours such as the Down From...
and opening act Jimmy Van M
Jimmy Van M
Jimmy Van M is a DJ of progressive house and downtempo music. He was a large part of the "Delta Heavy Tour" with Sasha & John Digweed, in addition to performing with many other DJs, such as James Zabiela and Lee Burridge. He has released a few singles as well as mix albums on Ultra Records and...
, the tour covered 31 cities and played to 85,000 people. The appearances, complete with laser shows and video production, were more akin to rock concerts than to typical DJ events. This development was new to the DJing scene, and compelled other DJs to host similar concerts. A DVD of performance highlights, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage was released as Sasha & John Digweed present Delta Heavy
Sasha & John Digweed present Delta Heavy
Sasha & John Digweed present Delta Heavy is a DVD release from System Recordings which chronicles Sasha & John Digweed's "Delta Heavy" tour of the United States. It was released in 2005, three years after the original tour. "Delta Heavy" is known for being one of the first DJ tours to incorporate...
by System Recordings
System Recordings
System Recordings is a New York City based electronic music record label founded in 2000 by Eric Silver and Louis Montorio with a single artist, American drum and bass icon Dieselboy....
. Ben Turner, creator of the DanceStar awards, retrospectively described the Delta Heavy tour as "a landmark moment for electronic music". Though the duo of Sasha and Digweed never explicitly split up, demanding schedules and frequent independent touring prevented any substantial collaboration for a long period after Delta Heavy.
Post-Digweed
During the latter half of 2002, Sasha collaborated with big beatBig beat
Big beat is a term employed since the mid-1990s by the British music press to describe much of the music by artists such as The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, and Propellerheads typically driven by heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns in...
artist Junkie XL
Junkie XL
Tom Holkenborg , better known as Junkie XL or JXL, is a Dutch musician. He uses the name JXL in cases where the term "Junkie" might cause offense. XL is for "Xpanding Limits"....
on the single "Breezer". Junkie XL, along with Charlie May, also assisted Sasha on his second album of original material, Airdrawndagger
Airdrawndagger
Airdrawndagger is an album by Sasha. It was released in 2002 by Kinetic Records and BMG. It also featured appearances from Charlie May and Junkie XL. The term "air-drawn dagger" was used in Macbeth to characterize an emotional outburst. The album has a very different sound from Sasha's other...
. Airdrawndagger took several years to produce due to Sasha's desire for the album to be "as near to perfection as possible." That March, Sasha suffered a perforated eardrum in a traffic accident, further delaying the album's production. Though the accident temporarily impaired his hearing, he drew inspiration for the album from his ordeal. Airdrawndagger was finally released, in August 2002, to much fanfare. However, the album was "received with a lot of head scratching", according to Sasha, which he attributed to its unexpected mix of genres. The album did not feature the heavier "club sound" of Sasha's previous mix albums, bearing a closer resemblance to ambient music
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
. Airdrawndagger generally received favorable reviews, though critics noted that it was not as consistent and well produced as his DJ mixes. Sasha himself described it as "a selfish, slightly self-indulgent record", though he maintains that he is "happy with it to this day". Some critics, however, called it "sleepy"; E!Online described it as being "more in league with Yanni
Yanni
Yanni , born Yiannis Hrysomallis is a Greek self-taught pianist, keyboardist, and composer who has spent most of his life in the United States.He earned Grammy nominations for his 1992 album, Dare to Dream, and the 1993 follow-up, In My Time...
than Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
". To encourage listeners' interest, Sasha held an amateur remix contest for the album's first single, "Wavy Gravy". Due to the contest's success, Sasha released all the tracks from Airdrawndagger on his website, so that fans could download and create their own versions.
After the release of Airdrawndagger, Sasha took the young DJ James Zabiela
James Zabiela
James Zabiela is a DJ and producer from Southampton in the United Kingdom. In his early years his signature style was a fusion of Breakbeat and House music, more recently however, he is regarded as a Tech House DJ although his use of Breakbeat music is still key to the more flashy parts of his sets...
"under his wing". He introduced Zabiela to the CDJ1000
CDJ1000
The CDJ-1000 was a digital turntable by Pioneer Electronics in 2001 that was used to play CDs and was generally accepted as the first CD player that can accurately emulate a vinyl turntable - including the ability to scratch - and became a popular CD player used by DJs...
turntable, and signed Zabiela to the Excession talent agency. The two toured the United States together, which extended Sasha's influence to already-popular American DJs such as Kimball Collins.
Global Underground
Global Underground is a music label founded in 1996 by Andy Horsfield and James Todd. The label symbolizes the international explosion of dance music during the 1990s and first manifesto for high-end DJs such as Sasha, Paul Oakenfold, John Digweed, Danny Tenaglia, Nick Warren, Dave Seaman, Darren...
to produce another mix album. However, he found the process of creating a standard mix album unrewarding, and decided to apply his production and DJing skills to a mix compilation that resembled a "real" album—that is, one featuring original material. Sasha's next studio album, Involver
Involver
Involver is a progressive house and breaks mix compilation by Sasha. Tracks which Sasha admired by other artists were chosen for this album and have each been remixed to give Sasha's own interpretation of them. It received generally favorable reviews for its track selection and creative mixing...
, was "a fusion of mix album and production record", consisting entirely of Sasha's reworkings of tracks by other artists. "I tried to take all the separate sounds to all the tracks [and recombine them]", he later explained, "and it allowed me to mix the tracks together on a much deeper level." He accomplished this by sequencing
Music sequencer
The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
the album using Ableton Live
Ableton Live
Ableton Live is a loop-based software music sequencer and DAW for Mac OS and Windows by Ableton. The latest major release of Live, Version 8, was released in April 2009. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for...
and Logic Pro
Logic Pro
Logic Pro is a hybrid 32 / 64 bit digital audio workstation and MIDI sequencer software application for the Mac OS X platform. Originally created by German software developer Emagic, Logic Pro became an Apple product when Apple bought Emagic in 2002...
. Ableton Live is a music loop
Music loop
In electroacoustic music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns...
-based software package that Sasha uses to engineer tracks in real-time, whereas he used Logic Pro primarily for premeditated edits to audio tracks.
In 2005, Sasha produced his next mix album, Fundacion NYC
Fundacion NYC
Fundacion NYC is a progressive house mix compilation by Sasha. This album is recorded using the Ableton Live software and the album bears the name of his monthly residency nights in New York and Los Angeles.-Track listing:...
, based on his nights DJing in New York at the Crobar club. Fundacion NYC received positive reviews for its originality, though JIVE Magazine
JIVE Magazine
JIVE Magazine is a popular-entertainment, technology, and urban-culture magazine. It publishes features, reviews, editorials, photo galleries, and art productions on the web as well as quarterly in print. The web edition is updated frequently. JIVE Magazine launched its website in August 2000...
found it "too complicated for the ear". Sasha is pleased with the album, and plans to make a series of Fundacion albums. The next year, Sasha released 10,000 copies of a June 2006 DJ set for sale using Instant Live
Instant Live
Instant Live is a service by Live Nation which provides for the distribution of digital live recordings of concerts and music events, available soon after a performance has ended...
, making him the first DJ to use Instant Live's licensing and publishing services. In August 2007, Sasha announced the formation of his record label, Emfire, which will be the exclusive outlet for his new material in both vinyl and digital formats. Its first release was"COMA", a collaborative track by a group of the same name which features Sasha, Barry Jamieson, Charlie May, and Duncan Forbes. While continuing to regularly DJ, Sasha began work on another Involver mix and the next Fundacion mix. Sasha's Invol2ver
Invol2ver
-External links:*...
was released in September 2008.
Back with Digweed
Though frequent performing kept them apart for several years, Sasha and Digweed announced that they would reunite for a few Australian performances. In November 2006, the duo performed at several venues, including SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
, and Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
as well as numerous tour dates throughout 2007. In 2008, Sasha and Digweed kicked off an American tour with a performance at the Winter Music Conference
Winter Music Conference
The Winter Music Conference is a weeklong electronic music conference, held every March since the mid-1980s in Miami, Florida, United States. Venues are hosted primarily in Downtown Miami and Miami's South Beach...
. The duo played at mainly larger venues on the weekends and smaller (750-1000 people) shows on weekdays. Sasha described their music as "driving and dark" with "a little throwback of Twilo sounds". The duo now perform together annually at the Winter Music Conference.
Sasha runs a music studio and lives in New York City, and maintains a house in London. He brings his wife with him on his frequent tours. Sasha finds the constant touring to be physically tiring, though he also feels that he thrives on it. While fans may regard Sasha to be a DJ "hero", he is uneasy with fame; Sasha considers himself "shy at heart" and is typically uncomfortable discussing his personal life. He has mentioned on numerous occasions that he is so busy with DJing and production that he rarely has any free time. However, he enjoys watching football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
, cooking, and sampling the cuisine of the countries he visits.
The movie "New Emissions of Light & Sound" won the Best Original Score at the X-Dance Film Festival. The score was made up of new and previously unreleased tracks.
Musical genres
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
style, though by the time of his Shelley's residency he had begun to experiment more with American house. His tastes further developed as he moved to Renaissance, and he began to incorporate the pop-based sounds of Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
, Spooky
Spooky
Spooky is a British house/techno duo consisting of Duncan Forbes and Charlie May. They debuted with Gargantuan in 1993 after signing to Guerilla Records. In 1995 and 1996 they released three EPs on their own Generic Records label, followed quickly in mid-1996 by their second album, Found Sound...
, and Leftfield
Leftfield
Leftfield are a British duo of electronica artists and record producers, namely Paul Daley and Neil Barnes, who formed in 1990 in London, England...
. Sasha's second Digweed collaboration, 1997's Northern Exposure, was described as "epic house", and subsequent releases featured the spacey and atmospheric progressive trance sound of artists such as Sven Väth
Sven Väth
Sven Väth is a Frankfurt-based DJ who has produced an extensive range of work since his career began in 1982. From 1985, he was part of the band OFF which released the hit "Electrica Salsa" in 1986...
, Matt Darey
Matt Darey
Matthew Jonathan "Matt" Darey has been a trance music producer since 1994. He is also a member of Lost Tribe with Red Jerry. He is perhaps best known for his work in the Euphoria trance series and for 'Gamemaster' and his remixes of Agnelli & Nelson's "El Niño". In 2005, his first major U.S...
, Tilt
Tilt (producers)
Tilt is a British group of electronic record producers, composed of Andy Moor and Mick Parks.Tilt was started in Coventry, England by Mick Parks and Mick Wilson. They became resident DJs at Eclipse, one of the early 1990s rave dance clubs. During their time at Eclipse, they met Sasha, who...
, and Armin Van Buuren. A rhythmic and bassy progressive house influence distinguished his Xpander EP and the mix albums of the late 1990s. At the time, Sasha's music rotation included records by artists such as Space Manoeuvres, BT, and Breeder
Breeder (producers)
Breeder was a progressive house production and DJ duo consisting of Simon Noble and Rowan Blades. They have performed remix work for Robert Miles, Orbital, and others. They have also released such popular singles as "Tyrantantic"....
, and Sander Kleinenberg's single "My Lexicon".
With the 2000 album Communicate, the duo's work moved towards a deeper and darker house music sound. The album featured tracks by Morel
Richard Morel
Richard Morel is an American singer-songwriter, DJ, remixer and record producer from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. He has worked extensively with Washington D.C.-based duo Deep Dish, co-writing, co-producing, performing and singing on many of their tracks, most notably on their albums Junk...
, Mainline
James Holden (producer)
James Holden is a British electronic music artist and DJ. Holden started his career in 1999, at age 19, when he released the trance single, "Horizons". After this he released numerous singles and remixes on different labels such as Lost Language, Perfecto Recordings, and Positiva Recordings...
, and Jimmy Van M
Jimmy Van M
Jimmy Van M is a DJ of progressive house and downtempo music. He was a large part of the "Delta Heavy Tour" with Sasha & John Digweed, in addition to performing with many other DJs, such as James Zabiela and Lee Burridge. He has released a few singles as well as mix albums on Ultra Records and...
. The focus shifted from the melodic themes of previous releases in favour of a stronger emphasis on the bassline. The Delta Heavy Tour and Airdrawndagger
Airdrawndagger
Airdrawndagger is an album by Sasha. It was released in 2002 by Kinetic Records and BMG. It also featured appearances from Charlie May and Junkie XL. The term "air-drawn dagger" was used in Macbeth to characterize an emotional outburst. The album has a very different sound from Sasha's other...
marked a dramatic shift in style, and reflected the influences of relaxed ambient
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
and breakbeat
Breakbeat
In 1992, a new style called "jungalistic hardcore" emerged, and for many ravers it was too funky to dance to. Josh Lawford of Ravescene prophesied that the breakbeat was "the death-knell of rave" because the ever changing drumbeat patterns of breakbeat music didn't allow for the same zoned out,...
music on Sasha's work. These influences inspired the album's strong melodies, occasional breakbeat loops, and limited use of percussion. Involver was primarily a fusion of the musical style of house and ambient breakbeat music characterised by UNKLE
UNKLE
Unkle are a British musical outfit founded in 1994 by school friends James Lavelle and Tim Goldsworthy. Originally categorized as trip-hop, the group once included producer DJ Shadow and have employed a variety of guest artists and producers.-First incarnation :Lavelle and Goldsworthy were joined...
and Lostep
Lostep
Lostep is a production duo composed of Australians Luke Chable and Phil K. They have released singles on labels such as Eq [Grey]. Additionally, their music has appeared on compilations by Sasha and Dave Seaman. In April 2006, Lostep released their first full album, Because We Can on GU Music...
. With 2005's Fundacion, Sasha's style was mostly progressive house and electro-house music, with work by James Holden
James Holden (producer)
James Holden is a British electronic music artist and DJ. Holden started his career in 1999, at age 19, when he released the trance single, "Horizons". After this he released numerous singles and remixes on different labels such as Lost Language, Perfecto Recordings, and Positiva Recordings...
, Tiefschwarz
Tiefschwarz
Tiefschwarz is an electro house group comprising brothers, Alexander "Ali" and Sebastian "Basti" Schwarz, which formed in Stuttgart in 1996. Peter Hoff, who runs the Benztown studios in Stuttgart, joined later, and completed the first Tiefschwarz production team...
, and Swayzak
Swayzak
Swayzak is a tech house duo from the United Kingdom that consists of James S. Taylor and David Brown. They live and work in London and released their first 12" single "Bueno" / "Fukumachi" in February 1997 to much acclaim...
. With his success in progressive house, Sasha has commented that he feels people try to "pigeon-hole" him into playing that genre. Rather than calling it progressive house, Sasha considers his most recent material to be between house, trance, and breaks, though he has stated that he prefers not to associate himself with a specific genre of music.
Techniques and technology
Sasha is known for applying new music technologies to both his studio and live work. Both Sasha and Digweed used Pro Tools on Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computers when mixing their compilation albums, and used turntables and records during live performances. For their remixes, however, they used an Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
—an obsolete personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
from the early 1990s—with Notator, a music sequencer
Music sequencer
The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
used for arranging audio tracks. For more recent albums such as Fundacion NYC, Sasha used Ableton Live for sequencing, partially because of Pro Tools' higher price. In live performances up to the late 1990s, Sasha performed exclusively using records. Before he started using the CDJ1000
CDJ1000
The CDJ-1000 was a digital turntable by Pioneer Electronics in 2001 that was used to play CDs and was generally accepted as the first CD player that can accurately emulate a vinyl turntable - including the ability to scratch - and became a popular CD player used by DJs...
, a "turntable" used for CDs, he had his digital music specially cut to acetate records
Acetate disc
An acetate disc, also known as a test acetate, dubplate , lacquer , transcription disc or instantaneous disc...
before each tour. Once he integrated CDs into his live act, Sasha operated CDJ1000s with Allen & Heath
Allen & Heath
Allen & Heath is a company based in Penryn, Cornwall, England, specialising in the manufacture of audio mixing consoles...
mixers and FireworX. While he is now known for heavily utilizing audio technologies, Sasha was one of the last DJs to begin using CDs in live performance.
MIDI controller
MIDI controller is used in two senses.*In one sense, a controller is hardware or software which generates and transmits MIDI data to MIDI-enabled devices....
, which he uses as a physical interface to the Live software. (DJing with a mouse
Mouse (computing)
In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
alone, he has said, is "not going to look right or feel right".) Fundacion NYC was the first album on which he regularly used the Maven controller. During DJ sets, clubbers often believe Sasha is playing new, unheard remixes; in fact, he is often playing modifications of tracks created in Ableton. Sasha most often uses the built-in Ableton plugins, preferring their superior stability and performance over third party plugins. For the first public performance of Involver material, he used a PowerBook
PowerBook
The PowerBook was a line of Macintosh laptop computers that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and redesigns, often being the first to incorporate features that would later become...
running Ableton, but has since shifted to a setup that includes an iMac G5
IMac G5
The iMac G5 was a series of desktop Macintosh computers designed and built by Apple Inc. using the PowerPC chip architecture. It was the last line of iMac computers that used a PowerPC chip, making it the last of the iMacs that could run Mac OS 9 applications. In August 2004, the iMac design was...
and Ableton Live. Despite Sasha's insistence that Ableton Live allows for greater creativity and spontaneity, "vinyl purists" have accused him of taking much of the challenge and mystique out of DJing by using software in performances.
The Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
has affected how Sasha obtains and uses tracks for performance. While he once hunted through record shops for new records on a regular basis, Sasha now regularly receives new tracks from producers and labels via the Internet. These tracks, which number in the hundreds each week, are edited by Sasha and others for use in his live DJ sets. He still buys hundreds of records on vinyl, which are then recorded and converted into music files prior to being edited in Ableton by his team of engineers.
Popularity and honors
He has been voted among the top ten DJs in the world by readers of DJMagDJMag
DJ Mag is a British monthly magazine dedicated to Electronic dance music and DJs. Founded January 31, 1991, the magazine is translated monthly to Portuguese, Polish , Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Chinese, Bulgarian, Spanish, French, German and Italian.- DJ Blackbook :In January 2008, the magazine...
every year since 1997, placing first in 2000. At the annual Winter Music Conference
Winter Music Conference
The Winter Music Conference is a weeklong electronic music conference, held every March since the mid-1980s in Miami, Florida, United States. Venues are hosted primarily in Downtown Miami and Miami's South Beach...
, Sasha has won the "Best Techno/Trance 12" award (1999) for the Xpander EP, and "Best CD Compilation" awards for Global Underground: Ibiza (1999, 2000) and Involver (2004). He was also nominated in the categories "Best European DJ" (2004) and "Best Remixer". At the 1999 Ericsson Muzik Awards, he received an award for "Outstanding Contributions to Dance Music". Sasha was nominated as the top DJ in his genre every year since 2000 in the DJ Awards
DJ Awards
The DJ Awards is the electronic dance music international awards, honouring the DJ´s and the music industry that supports them. Since 1998, these awards are held annually at Pacha Ibiza in the last week of September which coincides with the closings of the most important Ibiza clubs...
, but did not win. However, in 2008, he was selected as the best DJ in the progressive house category.
In 2005, the Grammy committee debated whether Involver was eligible for nomination as Best Electronic/Dance Album
Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album
The Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronica Album is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality albums in the dance music and electronica genres...
. The Recording Academy decided that the album was eligible, but Involver did not receive a nomination. Sasha did receive a Grammy nomination for his remix of Felix da Housecat
Felix da Housecat
Felix da Housecat is an American DJ and record producer, mostly known for house music and electroclash. His name was inspired by Felix the Cat....
's "Watching Cars Go By", which was featured on Involver.
Selected discography
Albums- 1994: The Qat CollectionThe Qat CollectionThe Qat Collection is a 1994 album by Sasha and Tom Frederikse featuring vocals from Sam Mollison.-Original version:# "Minimal Qat" – 9:42# "Magic" – 12:33# "Animal Qat" – 13:09# "Higher Ground" – 10:13# "Vegetable Qat" – 10:55...
(Deconstruction Records) - 2002: AirdrawndaggerAirdrawndaggerAirdrawndagger is an album by Sasha. It was released in 2002 by Kinetic Records and BMG. It also featured appearances from Charlie May and Junkie XL. The term "air-drawn dagger" was used in Macbeth to characterize an emotional outburst. The album has a very different sound from Sasha's other...
(Kinetic Records, BMGBMGBertelsmann Music Group, , was a division of Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Japan's Sony Corporation of America on October 1, 2008. It was established in 1987 to combine the music label activities of Bertelsmann...
) (UK Albums ChartUK Albums ChartThe UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
#18, Billboard 200 #157, Billboard Top Electronic AlbumsTop Electronic AlbumsDance/Electronic Albums is a music chart published weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks the top-selling electronic music albums in the United States. The chart debuted on the issue dated June 30, 2001. It originally began as a fifteen-position chart and has since expanded to twenty-five...
#5)
DJ Mixes/Compilations
- 1994: Renaissance - The Mix CollectionRenaissance - The Mix CollectionRenaissance: The Mix Collection is the first mix CD set by Sasha & John Digweed.-Overview and Significance to History of Mixed Dance Albums:To this day, Renaissance: The Mix Collection is considered the first true fully mixed dance album...
with John DigweedJohn DigweedJohn Digweed is an English DJ, record producer and acclaimed actor.-Biography:John Digweed began DJing around age 4...
(Renaissance Records) - 1996: Northern ExposureNorthern Exposure (album)Northern Exposure is a 1996 mix album by DJs Sasha & John Digweed. There is both a British edition released by Ministry of Sound and an American edition released by Ultra Records...
with John Digweed (Ministry of SoundMinistry of SoundMinistry of Sound London, commonly referred to as simply Ministry of Sound or MoS, is a nightclub based in London, United Kingdom and an associated record label. It was ranked fourth in the 2010 DJ Magazine top 100 clubs poll 2010. As well as the nightclub in London, there is another in Egypt and...
, Ultra RecordsUltra RecordsUltra Records is an American independent electronic dance music record label. Ultra was formed in New York City in 1995 by former Polygram and Virgin Records executive Patrick Moxey, who is still currently the owner...
) - 1997: Northern Exposure 2Northern Exposure 2Northern Exposure 2 is a mix album by Sasha & John Digweed released in 1997. In the United Kingdom, it was released by Ministry of Sound as a double CD package, whereas in the United States, it was on Ultra Records as two separate CDs — a "West Coast Edition" and an "East Coast Edition".-Disc 1:...
with John Digweed (Ministry of Sound, Ultra Records) - 1998: Global Underground 009: San Francisco (BoxedBoxedBoxed was a record label which has released around forty mix albums from DJs such as John Digweed, Nick Warren, and Danny Howells. They are most known for their Global Underground series. After stopping releases due to financial difficulties in 2003, Global Underground Ltd...
) - 1999: Northern Exposure: ExpeditionsNorthern Exposure: ExpeditionsNorthern Exposure: Expeditions is a 1999 progressive trance mix album by Sasha and John Digweed. The UK release was featured on INCredible whereas the United States edition was released by Ultra Records...
with John Digweed (INCredibleINCredibleAn understating phrase often used when describing the most incredible person in the world Bonnie Sleeman, Bonnie is also commonly mentioned as the most amazing person in history, stunning, beautiful, and better than Ryan Pasfield. she is also known as Beautiful Bonnie and Super Sleeman.'INCredible...
, Ultra Records) - 1999: Global Underground 013: Ibiza (Boxed)
- 2000: CommunicateCommunicate (mix album)Communicate is a mix album by Sasha & John Digweed.-Disc one:#Jaimy & Kenny D. - "Like A Bitch" – 8:23#Eric Clapton - "Get Lost " – 6:04#Sven Väth - "Barbarella " – 10:11...
with John Digweed (INCredible, Kinetic RecordsKinetic RecordsKinetic Records was a New York City-based record label founded by Steve Lau , that launched the careers of artists and DJs such as Paul Oakenfold, BT, Deepsky, Kosheen, Tilt, Timo Maas, Grace, Sandra Collins, Billy Thermal, Binary Finary, and Shpongle...
) (Billboard 200Billboard 200The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
#149) - 2004: InvolverInvolverInvolver is a progressive house and breaks mix compilation by Sasha. Tracks which Sasha admired by other artists were chosen for this album and have each been remixed to give Sasha's own interpretation of them. It received generally favorable reviews for its track selection and creative mixing...
(Global Underground Ltd.) (UK #61, Billboard 200 #200, Billboard Electronic #1) - 2005: Fundacion NYCFundacion NYCFundacion NYC is a progressive house mix compilation by Sasha. This album is recorded using the Ableton Live software and the album bears the name of his monthly residency nights in New York and Los Angeles.-Track listing:...
(Global Underground Ltd.) (Billboard Electronic #4) - 2006: Avalon Los Angeles CA 24/06/06Avalon Los Angeles CA 24/06/06Avalon Los Angeles CA 24/06/06 is an album recorded and released in 2006 by Sasha. The entire set was recorded from a live performance at Avalon in Los Angeles, California...
(Instant LiveInstant LiveInstant Live is a service by Live Nation which provides for the distribution of digital live recordings of concerts and music events, available soon after a performance has ended...
) - 2008: The emFire Collection: Mixed, Unmixed & RemixedThe EmFire Collection: Mixed, Unmixed & RemixedThe emFire Collection: Mixed, Unmixed & Remixed is a collection of remixes of Sasha's tracks "Coma," "Park it in Shade," "Who Killed Sparky?" and "Mongoose." The second disc contains edits of these tracks, as well a continuous mix of Sasha's score from the surf film New Emissions of Light & Sound...
(emFire, Ultra Records, Style Records) - 2008: Invol2verInvol2ver-External links:*...
(Global Underground Ltd.)
DVD
- 2006: Sasha & John Digweed present Delta HeavySasha & John Digweed present Delta HeavySasha & John Digweed present Delta Heavy is a DVD release from System Recordings which chronicles Sasha & John Digweed's "Delta Heavy" tour of the United States. It was released in 2005, three years after the original tour. "Delta Heavy" is known for being one of the first DJ tours to incorporate...
with John Digweed (System RecordingsSystem RecordingsSystem Recordings is a New York City based electronic music record label founded in 2000 by Eric Silver and Louis Montorio with a single artist, American drum and bass icon Dieselboy....
)