Misplaced Pages

Sasha (DJ)

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Wickethewok (talk | contribs) at 16:14, 30 August 2006 (fix fmting, new img). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 16:14, 30 August 2006 by Wickethewok (talk | contribs) (fix fmting, new img)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Sasha
Musical artist

Alexander Coe (born September 4, 1969), better known as Sasha, is a Welsh DJ and record producer. Starting out in the late 1980s playing acid house, he rose as a central figure in the popularization of electronic dance music. He teamed up with fellow DJ John Digweed, touring internationally and producing a series of mix albums. Sasha and Digweed helped extend the popularity of progressive trance and house in the 1990s with their Northern Exposure albums and Global Underground series releases. Sasha has also produced charting singles and performed remixes for popular artists such as Madonna and The Chemical Brothers.

Sasha has heavily influenced electronic dance music and how it is perceived. He directly influenced younger DJs and producers such as Brian Transeau and James Zabiela, who have made substantial contributions to modern dance music. By embracing modern mixing methods through his use of Ableton Live and the CDJ1000, Sasha helped popularize modern technological innovations among DJs who had previously relied only on records and turntables.

Early years

Sasha was born and raised in the small Welsh town of Hawarden. Even from a young age, he enjoyed literature and music. As a child, his earliest exposure to music was primarily Motown records. Later, he listened to pop music such as The The and The Police. At the age of 17 after what he described as an "idyllic childhood", he passed the entrance exam for Epsom School. However, he did not enjoy his time there and left before his A-Levels. He then moved to Bangor to be with his father in Northern Wales. His stepmother forced him to take piano lessons, which he claims he hated at the time, but ultimately found beneficial to his career.

Early electronic music experience

Sasha first gained exposure to electronic music through the popular Manchester dance club Haçienda in 1988. He was drawn to both the acid house music and the attitude he found associated with it. After many weekly visits to Manchester, he moved to Disley, sharing an apartment with a friend. After he obtained a job in telemarketing, his collection of acid house records grew. Eventually, a DJ in a local pub announced he was looking for other DJs to tour with him. Sasha volunteered and made his debut in nearby Stockport. Sasha said 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."

Template:Sound sample box align right Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end Template:Sample box end

Resident Haçienda DJ Jon DaSilva helped Sasha get booked at his club. Sasha continued to DJ at Haçienda as well as at illegal raves in Blackburn and Blackpool. He worked for a few years building up his record collection, though he found himself in debt due to both the number of records he bought and the low pay he received for performances. He taught himself to beatmatch and learned key mixing from DaSilva. Sasha obtained a booking at Shelley's in Stoke-on-Trent in 1991. There, he established part of his signature sound by mixing euphoric trance music with hard techno and emotional a cappellas. In 1991, Sasha was the first DJ featured on the cover of Mixmag with the line "SASHA MANIA - THE FIRST DJ PINUP?". In 1992, he released his first single "Appolonia" under the name "BM:Ex" (Barry Manilow Experience) on Union City Recordings with Tom Frederikse. He left his residency at Shelley's due to increased gang activity and violence in and around the club. Due to his stay at Shelley's, he was offered performing jobs in London and Australia, but obtained a consistent spot in the rotation at Renaissance in 1993. That same year, Sasha produced his first single under the name Sasha with Danny Campbell called "Together" on Pete Tong's FFRR. It peaked on the UK Singles Chart at #57.

Digweed era

Renaissance - The Mix Collection, Sasha & Digweed's first mix album
Main article: Sasha & John Digweed

John Digweed had been DJ-ing for ten years before getting a residency at Renaissance where he met Sasha. Their partnership started during Sasha's final performances at Renaissance. Together, Sasha and John Digweed honed their DJ-ing skills, often performing in tandem while focusing on track selection and technical mixing abilities. Sasha began his series of productions for Deconstruction Records with "Higher Ground" and "Magic" (for which Digweed performed a remix) as well as The Qat Collection with vocalist Sam Mollison.

In 1994, Sasha and Digweed released the triple CD mix album Renaissance - The Mix Collection on Renaissance Records, which was actually released after Sasha left Renaissance. It contained popular dance hits of the time from artist such as Leftfield, Fluke, and 2 Bad Mice as well as original productions and remixes from the duo. Sasha was again featured on Mixmag with the tag line "SON OF GOD?", which Sasha resented. Two years later, the duo became "true superstars" with the release of their double CD Northern Exposure on mega-label Ministry of Sound. This release was brought to the United States the next year in a single CD package on Ultra Records. In 1995, Sasha began his recurring mentorship and partnership with fellow producer BT on the album Ima. Sasha is credited with finding and "nurturing" Brian Transeau during the time they produced together.For the second CD of the album, Sasha provided a "euphoric" and "introspective" 42 minute rendition of the album's first disc. Sasha continued to advance his production work by teaming with Maria Nayler to produce the UK Singles Chart top 20 hit "Be As One".

Template:Sound sample box align right Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end Template:Sample box end

1997 saw the release of the Northern Exposure 2 double CD mix album, again on Ministry of Sound. Sasha and Digweed toured internationally, helping define the sound of trance music in the late '90s. That same year, Digweed and Sasha took up residency at New York City's famous Twilo nightclub. In 1998, Digweed and Sasha released separate mix albums on Boxed as part of the Global Underground series with Digweed's GU 006: Sydney and Sasha's GU 009: San Francisco release. Sasha's album drew from his experience pf touring on the West Coast of the United States. Around this time, both DJs formed their own record labels; Sasha created Excession Records and Digweed created Bedrock Records. Sasha also founded "Excession: The Agency LTD." with Tara Morgan, which is the booking agency for many popular DJs including Hybrid, Nick Warren, Steve Lawler, James Lavelle, and Desyn Masiello along with Sasha's former collaborators James Zabiela and Spooky. Excession Records featured less than ten releases, the last of which was in 1998. Sasha began to reach more mainstream audiences when remixed Madonna's "Ray of Light" and Gus Gus's "Purple" for their releases as singles. He accepted an offer to score the music for the PlayStation video game Wipeout 3.

In 1999, Sasha and Digweed released their third edition in the Northern Exposure series: Northern Exposure: Expeditions. With Charlie May of Spooky, Sasha produced his Xpander EP on Deconstruction, which clubbers view as "one of the greatest trance tracks of all time". He used the title track as one of the centerpieces for GU 013: Ibiza, his second Global Underground release. Sasha continued his collaborations on BT's Movement in Still Life on the track "Ride", which was released as a single on Yoshitoshi Records. He worked with Underworld's Darren Emerson on their single "Scorchio." In addition to Sasha and Digweed's Twilo residency, they toured the United States heavily, especially to promote their DJ mix Communicate in 2000.

Delta Heavy Tour

Template:Sound sample box align right Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end Template:Sample box end In 2002, Sasha and Digweed embarked with Jimmy Van M on their "Delta Heavy Tour" across the United States. The tour was produced by Warped Tour creator Kevin Lyman. The tour covered 31 cities and played to 85,000 people in total. Concerts of Delta Heavy, complete with laser shows and video production, were more akin to rock concerts than typical DJ events. This was new for the DJ-ing scene and encouraged other DJs to do the same. In 2006, 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, 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 touring have prevented them from substantial collaborative efforts since Delta Heavy.

Post Digweed

Later in 2002, Sasha began collaborations with big beat artist Junkie XL, whose work he heavily influenced. Together, Sasha and Junkie XL wrote and produced the single "Breezer." Junkie XL, along with Charlie May, also collaborated with Sasha on Sasha's first artist album, Airdrawndagger. Airdrawndagger had been in the works for a long period of time, due to Sasha's desire for the album to be "as near to perfection as possible," according to BT. This created high expectations among fans and critics. Sasha described the release of the album as "received with a lot of head scratching". He attributed this to Airdrawndagger not featuring the heavier "club sound" of his previous mix albums and instead sounding similar to ambient music. It generally garnered favorable reviews, though it did receive criticism for not being as solid and well put together as Sasha's DJ mixes. Sasha claims that a March 2001 traffic accident in which he suffered a perforated ear drum helped inspire the music of the album. He held an amateur remix contest for the album's first single, "Wavy Gravy". Due to the success of the contest, Sasha released elements of all the tracks for Airdrawndagger on his website to be downloaded and remixed by fans. Around this time, he took James Zabiela "under his wing", showing him the CDJ1000 and having Zabiela join his Excession DJ agency. Sasha's and Zabiela's trips to the United States extended their influence to already popular American DJs such as Kimball Collins.

Sasha on the cover of Involver

Sasha's next studio effort, Involver, was "a fusion of mix album and production record," which consisted mainly of Sasha's reworkings of tracks by other artists. Originally, he had been signed with Global Underground to do another normal mix album, but he found the process unrewarding. Instead, he decided to combine his production and DJ-ing talents for a single compilation that resembled a "real" album - that is, one featuring original material. Like much of Sasha's other work at the time, it was put together using Ableton Live. For the final mix he used Logic Pro as well.

In 2005, Sasha produced his album Fundacion NYC, which was based on his nights DJ-ing New York's Fundacion club. It was the first album to ever be mixed using Sasha's Maven controller. 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.

Sasha lives in New York City with a personal studio in Florida. He still maintains a house in London as well. Sasha is married and brings his wife with him on his frequent touring.

Musical genres

Sasha performing 8 July 2006 in Bucharest, Romania, playing some electro-house.

Sasha has stated that he does not like to associate himself with a specific genre of music. In his early years, influenced by the sound of Haçienda, Sasha embraced acid house. As the '90s began, he began to play out more Italian house music. During his residence at Shelley's, he began to experiment more with American house and other music which he described as "happy". At Renaissance, he played a lot of the popular house music of the time such as that of Moby, 2 Bad Mice, and Leftfield. In his first collaboration with John Digweed, Northern Exposure, Sasha's music was described as "epic house". Sasha's next few mix albums popularized progressive trance by artists such as Sven Vath, Matt Darey, Tilt, and Armin Van Buuren. Along with his Xpander EP, his mix albums of the late 1990s were distinguished by their progressive house nature. In Sasha's constant rotation around this time were records by artists such as Space Manoeuvres, BT, Breeder, and especially Sander Kleinenberg's single "My Lexicon".

With Sasha and Digweed's Communicate album in 2000, their work took a step towards a deeper house music sound with pieces by Morel, Mainline, and Jimmy Van M. These tracks utilized a hard bassline rather than the floaty keyboards of previous mix albums. During production of Airdrawndagger, Sasha was heavily influenced by ambient and trance music. In it, he used strong melodies with more minimal percussion and breakbeats. Involver fully embraced a fusion of breakbeats and progressive house characterized by UNKLE and Lostep. 2005's Fundacion saw Sasha's new breed of progressive house and electro-house tracks with work by James Holden, Tiefschwarz, and Swayzak. Sasha has commented that he feels he has been "pigeon-holed" into playing progressive house and considers his most recent material to be somewhere in the middle of house, trance, and breaks.

Techniques and technology

Sasha during a July 15, 2006 performance at Panama, an Amsterdam nightclub

Sasha attributes his success as a DJ to his technical skills and his ability to "connect with his dancers". During his performances, he tries to maintain a balance between new and experimental material while making sure "the party is still rockin'". Sasha states that when he begins creating a new mix album, he only has a vague idea of the tracklist for the album. Because of this, he says that his albums never quite turn out the way he expects.

Sasha is famous for embracing new musical technologies for both his studio work and live DJ-ing. He and John Digweed used Pro Tools for mixing their compilation albums, unlike their live performances where they used turntables and records. For their remixes, however, they used an Atari ST (which was considered obsolete by this time) with Notator software. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he often used CDJ1000s with Allen & Heath mixers and FireworX. Sasha began using Ableton Live as a third turntable around 2005. He explored its functionality and realized he could do everything he wanted in it. He then co-developed the "Maven" controller, which was used for dissecting tracks to use with the software. During DJ sets, clubbers often believe he is playing new, unheard remixes; in fact, Sasha is often playing modifications of tracks he created in Ableton. He most often uses the built-in plugins due to stability and performance issues. For the first public performance of Involver material, Sasha used a PowerBook running Ableton. Sasha's typical recent setup is an iMac G5 and Ableton Live, which he says allows for a good deal of spontaneity while DJ-ing.

Sasha states that the internet has greatly affected the way he obtains music. Formerly, he used to hunt through record shops for new records; now, he regularly receives new tracks from producers and labels via the internet. Every week, Sasha receives hundreds of new tracks which he and others edit down for use in his live DJ sets.

Popularity and honors

Template:Sound sample box align right Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end Template:Sample box end

Sasha has been consistently popular among dance music fans, as he has been voted into the top five DJs in the world by readers of DJMag every year since 1997; this includes finishing #1 in 2000 and #2 to partner John Digweed in 2001. At the annual Winter Music Conference, Sasha has won the "Best Techno/Trance 12"" award for the Xpander EP and "Best CD Compilation" awards for both Global Underground: Ibiza and Involver. He was also nominated for "Best European DJ" and "Best Remixer". At the 1999 Ericsson Muzik Awards, he was given the award for "Outstanding Contribution to Dance Music". Sasha has been nominated as top DJ in his genre every since 2000 in the DJ Awards, but has not won.

In 2005, the Grammy committee debated over whether Involver was eligible for nomination. After deciding that it was eligible, the full academy did not nominate it, though Sasha did receive a Grammy nomination for his remix of "Watching Cars Go By" by Felix Da Housecat that same year.

Selected discography

Albums:

Singles/EPs:

DVD:

Notes and references

  1. ^ Kidzworld interview(link) (Retrieved 6 July 2006).
  2. Resident Advisor profile (link) (Retrieved 12 August 2006).
  3. ^ "Sasha speaks", BBC Wales (link) (Retrieved 11 July, 2006.
  4. ^ SoundRevolt biography (link) (Retrieved 6 July 2006).
  5. ^ Dresden, Dave. DJ Times interview with Sasha (link).
  6. "Sasha - Standing the Test of Time", Resident Advisor, 18 October 2004 (link).
  7. ^ BBC's Sasha biography (link) (Retrieved 6 July 2006).
  8. Prato, Greg, John Digweed biography, All Music Guide (link) (Retrieved 20 August 2006).
  9. Discogs.com entry for "Sasha" (link).
  10. ^ Brewster, Bill. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, (Grove Press, 2000), ISBN 0-8021-3688-5.
  11. ^ Birchmeier, Jason, Sasha + John Digweed biography, All Music Guide (link).
  12. Bidder, Sean. The Rough Guide to House Music. (Rough Guides, 1999), ISBN 1-85828-432-5.
  13. ^ Prato, Greg, Sasha biography, All Music Guide (link).
  14. Excession LTD Website (link) (Retrieved 11 July 2006).
  15. DJMixed.com's Interview with Rockstar Games and Psygnosis (link) (Retrieved 11 July 2006).
  16. Cooper, Sean, Spooky biography, All Music Guide (link) (Retrieved 22 August 2006).
  17. Snoman, Rick. Dance Music Manual: Toys, Tools, and Techniques, (Focus Press, 2004).
  18. ^ Turner, Ben, "Sasha & John Digweed - Delta Heavy: A DVD Documentary", Progressive-Sounds, 7 February 2006 (link).
  19. ^ Juarez, Vanessa, "DJ Sasha on Dance Music's Glowstick Culture", Newsweek, 3 February 2006 (link).
  20. ^ Sasha interview, Progressive-Sounds, February 2006 (link).
  21. Sasha interview, Gighit.com (link).
  22. Progressive-Sounds Interview with Junkie XL (link) (Retrieved 10 July 2006).
  23. Discogs.com entry for "Beauty Never Fades/Breezer" (discogs.com link).
  24. Swan, Glenn, Airdrawndagger review, All Music Guide (link) (Retrieved 21 August 2006).
  25. Jones, Simon, BT interview, Progressive-Sounds, December 2001 (link).
  26. Jones, Simon, Review of Airdrawndagger, Progressive-Sounds, 3 July 2002 (link).
  27. ^ McGeachin, Nick, "Sasha: His Life, The Music & Neil Young?", Virgin Megamagazine, 24 September, 2004 (link).
  28. Metacritic reviews page, (link)
  29. Review of Airdrawndagger, E!Online (link) (Retrieved 21 June 2006).
  30. WAVY GRAVY REMIX CONTEST WINNER ANNOUNCED (link).
  31. "Sasha's Freedom of Airdrawndagger", Resident Advisor, 24 February 2003 (link).
  32. About.com James Zabiela - Alive Review(link) (Retrieved 9 August 2006).
  33. ^ Romero, Dennis, "Building a Better DJ", Los Angeles CityBeat, 24 June 2004 (link).
  34. ^ Schaal, Tilmann, "DJ Sasha: Crossfade into the Digital Domain", Apple.com (link).
  35. "Sasha Fundacionnyc Mix", DJMixed.com (link) (Retrieved 10 July, 2006).
  36. Paoletta, Michael, "Sasha Plans Live DJ Mixes", Billboard, 24 May, 2006 (link).
  37. ^ "Sasha & Digweed", Rolling Stone Album Guide, Fourth Edition, 2004.
  38. Jones, Simon, "Sasha - Fundacion : NYC", Progressive-Sounds, 19 May 2006 (link).
  39. ^ Ben Blue, "Sasha - Fundacion NYC Interview" (link) (Retrieved 8 July, 2006).
  40. Gerrish, Bruce. Remix: The Electronic Music Explosion, (ArtistPro, 2001).
  41. "DJ Sasha talks Macs and Ableton", Macworld, 26 June, 2006 (link).
  42. DJMag Website (link) (Retrieved 22 August 2006.
  43. Winter Music Conference Website (link) (Retrieved 10 July 2006).
  44. "Sasha tops DJ poll", BBC News, 20 November, 2000 (link).
  45. Romero, Dennis, "In a Grammy Groove", Los Angeles CityBeat, 17 February, 2005 (link).
  46. Billboard Chart rankings gathered from Billboard.com (Retrieved 7 June 2006).
  47. UK Chart rankings gathered from Chartstats.com (Retrieved 7 June, 2006).

External links

Template:Persondata

Categories: