DJ SASHA
“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?
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