“Nice to meet you, Rob”, said Sasha. “And you”, I replied,
mildly surprised. You see, Sasha had blown me out for an
interview two years ago, and at the time, I was forced to
swallow my pride and forget the whole thing. As it happens,
as we met up two years later in a West London bar for drinks
and general conversation, we end up having a bloody good
chat. However, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to give you all
the dirt on the clubland characters that Sasha
served-up-off-the-record…. Few people have had more bullshit
spread about them over the years than Sasha (except perhaps
Princess Di), and I’m here to set the record straight. Sasha
is an incredibly talented DJ and artist, and in case you
were wondering, he’s a bloody nice bloke too. The dance
scene has been remarkably kind to Sasha over the years, and
I believe this attention is deserved. Reputed to be one of
the highest paid DJ’s in the world, Sasha can command a fee
of £5,000 for one remix alone. He is enjoying world-wide
acceptance, and on American tours people will often travel
over 1,000 miles to a venue to listen to the man. There’s
always been a curious mystique attached to Sasha from the
beginning. Perhaps it’s because he’s always done his own
thing. At the Amnesia raves and other such events, Sasha
would claim the last two hours and take his crowd on a
soothing, uplifting journey that inspired hundreds. It
certainly broke the monotony of slamming Hardcore all night
– a musical style which I wasn’t particularly ecstatic about
back then either. Spinning what he describes as piano
anthems, Sasha moved people’s minds as well as their bodies,
and was to a degree responsible for a dramatic evolution in
the scene. “At the raves I’d always go on for the last two
hours, after it had been Hardcore all night and play the
uplifting piano anthems at the end of the night, and no one
was really doing it then, you know. That’s how I got
noticed”. Shellys had been the first club Sasha received
genuine magazine attention in, and those evenings went down
in history, with thousands of tapes flying about the realm.
The sound was rough but the vibe was there, and a new youth
culture was becoming increasingly aware of Sasha. An
explosion seemed almost inevitable….. but then Sasha left
Shellys, never to return. The significant point in Sasha’s
career was of course Renaissance. Sasha discusses
Renaissance’s original concept…
“The reason why Renaissance first came about was because I’d
gone through some musical changes. It had been about two
years since I was at Shellys and I hadn’t had a residency. I
wanted a new club where I could play some longer sets and
start playing around with this new sound. The whole style of
sound that I play now evolved through the Renaissance
period. Especially meeting up with John Digweed. I think we
met up and heard each others music, we really inspired each
other. It’s a similar style, definitely, but we’ve both got
our own touches to it. I just love DJ’ing with John, when I
play with him, the transition is so smooth. I think
Renaissance went a little bit mainstream when it moved to
the Derby venue. It was still good in there, but the old
venue really had an atmosphere about it. A lot of people
will think of the old venue when they think of Renaissance.
I split from Renaissance because of a fall-out with Geoff
Oakes – it’s nothing I really want to discuss in a magazine.
I had a residency there for a year and a half and I just
moved on really. For the last two years I haven’t had a
residency, but I’m starting to feel like I need my own place
now”. And that’s exactly what he’s planning. Besides being
one of the busiest DJ’s in Britain, he also looks set to
become the most creative promoter in Britain. Sasha is
plotting with associates to build the most exciting club
this country has seen since Renaissance in Mansfield. “I’m
looking at a few options and I think I want to open my own
place soon, It’s going to happen, it’s just where and when
and who I’m going to do it with. I haven’t sorted out any of
the details yet. I think it’ll be in the Midlands somewhere.
I’ve had good nights in London, too. The Heaven night we did
in London just before Christmas was just like a full-on
Northern rave party, it was mad! There’s nothing more
demoralising than people not responding to your tunes. You
think you’re doing something wrong and then you start
thinking about what you’re playing. It doesn’t flow
naturally. When the crowd are going mental, that’s when you
start experimenting and dropping things in that you might
not normally play if you’re having a hard time”. Sasha
carefully works out each set in home or in his studio, but
when he plays out, that’s when the magic happens. He feeds
off the crowd, and in this sense, the set becomes free-form.
It creates itself. It was Graeme Park who partly inspired
Sasha. He had been one of the first British DJ’s to really
understand key mixing.
“When I first got into DJ’ing, I was totally blown away by
him. I’d never heard anyone do anything like that before, so
I think mixing wise, he’s totally inspired me. Even before
him, John Da Silva at the Hacienda back in 89-90 was a total
inspiration. What he was doing was amazing. I think people
like Graeme and John were instrumental to that ‘seamless’
style of mixing”. John Digweed had appeared at a time when
Sasha was on the verge of departing Renaissance. Many could
be forgiven for thinking he had appeared out of nowhere, but
Digweed was DJ’ing for ten years on the south coast. “He
sent a tape to Geoff at Renaissance and one weekend we heard
it at someone’s house after the club. I think within two
weeks John was DJ’ing at the club and within a month he was
a resident. As I was leaving, he just kind of took over. It
was perfect for him”. With a string of top remixes under his
belt including M-People’s ‘How Can I Love You More’ (the
tune which broke the band), Urban Soul’s ‘Always’, Reese
Project’s ‘Direct Me’ and many more, Sasha has made a
formidable impression on the music industry. “What
originally made me want to start producing was that there
weren’t enough vocal tracks that had atmospherics and
trancey sections in them”.
“Now I’m totally into the music I play out. So I guess it
all comes from my DJ’ing. It always has done”. Disillusioned
with his lack of hands-on control over remixes and tunes,
Sasha parted company with his producer, Tom Fredericks. I
mentioned earlier that Sasha was receiving £5,000 a remix,
but in reality, Sasha was walking away with around £500 in
his pocket. “When I was using studios that cost 800 or 900
quid a day, I was coming out with 500 quid in my hand for
mixes that were in the charts. I was getting five grand a
mix, but 3 or 4 grand of that was going to pay for the
studio and hiring the equipment in, because I didn’t have
any of my own gear, plus paying for an engineer and a
programmer for four days. I wanted more time to experiment
and I didn’t know how to speak the language. I didn’t know
how to program keyboards and there was no way I was going to
learn by just going in for three days and working to an egg
timer. I just decided to get my own equipment. So I invested
all the money I had into buying my gear and setting my
studio up. It’s taken me a year and a half of turning down
work and not really producing much, but now I think I’m
getting to the stage when I can work contracts and finish
stuff within two or three days rather than it taking me two
weeks”. Sasha’s highly acclaimed ‘Be As One’ was a musical
fusion between himself and the singer Maria. Maria’s
siren-like vocals were a perfect accompaniment to Sasha’s
thought-provoking soundscapes, and Sasha has sought her for
years. “She sang on that Ultra-Violet record, ‘Kite’. I used
to play that all the time in Shellys. I got in touch, we
wrote a few tunes together and then we did ‘Be As One’. She
is great to work with. I need to balance out what I’m doing.
My album is going to be quite down-beat. It’s going to be
very much an album you can listen to at home but there’s
going to be club mixes which will perhaps be similar to ‘Be
As One’, and then I’m also going to do some more minimal and
underground stuff to balance out the chart records”. Eastern
Bloc have always looked after Sasha records-wise, along with
Liverpool’s 3 Beat and TAG Records in London. Then, of
course, there’s the deluge of records he receives from
around the globe, but for the more down-beat styles, Sasha
heads for Atlas. “I keep getting kicked off mailing lists
for not returning reaction forms”, laughs Sasha. “It’s
pretty funny!”. And what of ‘The Son Of God?’. The
ridiculous slogan that a magazine who should have known
better, plastered on their front cover over two years ago.
What does he think of that?
“It was a bit of a shock. I thought it was a bit cheesy and
I thought it was just their way of selling the magazine by
putting something outrageous on the cover. I think you’ve
just got to laugh at those things. It’s just their way of
putting something daft on there. I have done quite a lot of
interviews recently, but I find them quite hard to do. It’s
fine sitting in the pub here talking, but when it’s like
pressurised interviews, I get a bit freaked out by it
sometimes. I don’t talk properly then because I get nervous
and stuff. I just find that whole process of selling
yourself, by talking, a bit of a drag”. I wondered about the
various reports of Sasha playing the ‘Moody DJ’, whether he
acknowledged this, and indeed, whether these allegations
hold any water…. “When I’m DJ’ing, I really do concentrate
on what I’m doing and sometimes I might go right into one. I
think when you’re DJ’ing you want to be left alone to get
into it. Unless you’re a party DJ, that is. When I play, I
really get into it, and sometimes I just want to be left
alone. I guess that might have come from that. Everyone has
their bad moods!”. Sasha has played an array of strange gigs
in his time, but surely few can have been as eventful as a
certain Foam Party in Peterborough in ’91. It appears that
Sasha had a scuffle with K-Klass.
“They came on stage and I turned the music off, and then
they walked off again, so I turned the music back on. They
were just messing about because they hadn’t been paid or
something. Before I knew it, they walked on stage again and
I wouldn’t turn the record off because I was so pissed off
with them. Next minute, the band are climbing up this tower
trying to get at me, and I still wouldn’t turn the music
off! We’ve all made up now, but it was amusing”. Sasha has
many exciting plans for the near future, and seems to
genuinely care about the development of the scene. For
instance, in between now and the release of this album,
Sasha’s making a collection of mix CDs and rather than
manufacturing triple packs with luxury packaging, he’s doing
a collection simply called ‘Snapshots’ which will be
released every six to eight weeks. Sasha explains…. “They’re
going to be very underground with not as many vocals as the
likes of Renaissance and Cream. These are going to be quite
hard. Hopefully that’ll combat the bootleg tape thing,
because it’s always happened to me. It’s a bit sad really. I
never get sorted out for it. In a way I guess it’s helped to
build my name up over the years, but when someone’s banging
out 10,000 of your tapes and you’re not getting a penny of
it, it’s slightly annoying. Especially when you’ve got no
control over the tape. I might have been pissed out of my
head one night and made a cock-up. Then the tape goes out
and six months later everyone goes, ‘Oh my God, what’s
happened to Sasha?’. If we keep the ‘Snapshots’ regular and
underground, I think we’ll combat that”. A man of many
talents, Sasha is even involved in designing his own mixer.
It all stemmed from his mix CD’s…. “I’ve been feeding
separate tracks into analogue keyboards and filtering sounds
so I can turn drum sounds into acid pulses and stuff. While
I’m mixing, it sounds like you’re kind of morphing from one
record to the next. While I was doing that, I had this idea
for a DJ mixer and I know this guy who’s really clued up,
and he’s designing it for me. I think it’ll revolutionise
what I’m doing. Everything will be liked to BPM so you can
really freak records out”.
At this point, the bar was getting a little out of control.
Loud music and hoards of babbling punters would soon make it
impossible for my trusty recorder to pick up Sasha’s dulcet
tones any longer. Well Sasha has a gig in Berlin tomorrow,
and the prospect of more beers and some serious low down
gossip seems quite an attractive proposition now. See you
all soon, and look out for Sasha’s album later in the year.
Now, where did I leave my fags?
DJs
