Sasha Albums (5)
What The Critics Say
Involver is a good name for this, since producer/DJ Sasha has "involved" himself in each of the tracks. Everything on Involver was exclusively recorded or remixed for the collection by Sasha. His influence isn't always evident but his involvement in everything keeps the album cohesive, always sounding light, a bit trippy, and a tasteful metallic blue. Involver is mixed, but for headphones rather than the dancefloor. It isn't until Felix da Housecat's "Watching Cars Go By" comes in nine tracks deep that you can seriously shake and shimmy, but with such great productions to get lost in, even the flightiest club kid should be seduced. Sasha puts the echo to Grand Central's wistful "Talk Amongst Yourselves," pulls the beat out from under Petter's "These Days" while slowing it down, and chops up UNKLE's "In a State" just to make it even more otherworldly. Smoother than smooth, the album can act as wallpaper but has enough twists and turns for active listening. Sasha gushes about the tunes and tells you what he did to them in the liner notes, but the mix is just as delicious if you don't give a toss about the concept. ~ David Jeffries, All Music Guide
'Airdrawndagger'
Release Date 7/2/2002
Tracks 11
Label BMG International
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What The Critics Say
After a dozen or so years as a high-profile remixer and DJ, Sasha's premiere full-length album has an almost unfair amount of anticipation to live up to. After Sasha assembled a couple solid Global Underground mix CDs plus jaw-dropping remixes for the likes of Madonna, GusGus, and several others, Airdrawndagger sounds a bit anticlimactic by comparison. All his past work earned him the spotlight, but now that he has it he's not sure what to say. It suggests he's better stretching and dissecting other people's material than he is at writing his own. This being said, Sasha and co-composer Charlie May have an exceptional ear for the tension-and-release formula of trance music. Their crispness stays intact here, along with gorgeous production value, but there's a price to pay for all the digital exactness: sterility. Track for track, the CD strains for the visceral excitement that has come so easily elsewhere. As subdued as it is, "Mr. Tiddles" is a warm depth charge to start the disc. It at least succeeds in delivering an anthem, rather than going right for the rave-house glowsticks and 190 beats per minute. It takes the album some time to summon a consistent attention-grabber like "Immortal," which growls through the streets like Orbital in a hovercraft. Immediately following, listeners can finally feel the hairs on the back of their necks start to stiffen as the nine-minute centerpiece, "Fundamental," marries cinderblock beats, acid-soaked squelches, and an opulent synth-bell refrain that digs hard into the trenches of dance club aesthetics. This, and the two subsequent tracks of "Boileroom" and "Bloodlock," is the reason to -- yes -- buy the album. "Requiem" is a lush cloud of sequencers that reaches the twilight of the disc, owing its sound to mid-'80s Tangerine Dream as much as anything in the past couple decades. The two pieces that follow are not especially groundbreaking, but there's enough variety to prove that this is in fact a legitimate album instead of an overstuffed EP like his polished Xpander from 1999. Airdrawndagger has a sharp blade, and hovers with threat, but it takes almost half the album before it draws blood. For Sasha, it's the shape of things to come rather than a triumphant arrival. ~ Glenn Swan, All Music Guide
'Global Underground: Ibiza'
Release Date 12/28/1999
Tracks 22
Label Global Underground
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What The Critics Say
You knew there had to be one. Out of the myriad Global Underground albums spotlighting a major international city, you knew there had to be an Ibiza album. After all, it's only fitting that the most popular DJ mix series of its time spotlight the most popular drug, drink, and dance getaway of its time. And it's also fitting that the Ibiza volume spotlights arguably the world's most popular DJ of the time, Sasha. Furthermore, it's perhaps fitting as well that he spins two sets of almost entirely trance, including all the big records of the time: Space Manoeuvres' "Stage One," Sasha's own "Xpander," BT's "Mercury and Solace," and the biggest of the big, Bedrock's "Heaven Scent." Keep in mind that this volume appeared in late 1999, at the peak of the worldwide trance craze. Therefore, in some ways, Global Underground: Ibiza can be seen as the culmination of all the hype: It features the trendiest DJ, the trendiest locale, the trendiest records, and so on. However, all of this may cause you to presume that Global Underground: Ibiza is the victim of its own excess. After all, popularity and trend rarely correlates with quality in dance music. More often than not, popularity and trend correlate instead with accessibility, mediocrity, and hyperbole. Well, whether you want to admit it or not, this album tends to be somewhat of an exception to the norm. It's no masterpiece, for sure, and certainly isn't anything particularly novel or daring. Rather, as mentioned earlier, it's the culmination of the late-'90s trance movement at its peak (only a year or two before the backlash truly set in and trance suddenly became an ugly word, sending the style spiraling toward the dark, dreary melancholia of the newly termed "progressive" movement). And as a culmination, this zenith is at times impressive, featuring the era's best producers: Breeder, Quivver, L.S.G., Sander Kleinenberg, and Cass and Slide, along with the others already mentioned. Face it: dance music doesn't get much more blissful than "Stage One," and it doesn't get much more over indulgent than "Heaven Scent" or more pseudo-euphoric than "Xpander" -- and that's the beauty of Global Underground: Ibiza. However, if there's anything this album needs, it's some diversity. Track after track of epic trance can start to wear on you after awhile. It's simply too much. And that's precisely why Sasha recoiled after this album for a bit, realizing that he'd taken his trance shtick as far as it could go for the time being. ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide
'Global Underground: San Francisco'
Release Date 2/16/1999
Tracks 26
Label Thrive
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What The Critics Say
By the time Sasha made his international album debut as a solo artist with Global Underground: San Francisco in 1999, he was already an icon. Alongside longtime partner John Digweed, Sasha had played a large part in the rapidly expanding popularity of progressive house and trance in the mid- to late '90s with the duo's popular Northern Exposure series. Furthermore, he was a full-fledged superstar in the U.K., where he spent most of the '90s honing his craft and furthering his reputation. Yet the American masses still had little idea who Sasha was or why he garnered such an iconic image. For example, on the back of Global Underground: San Francisco, popular U.K. dance scribe Dom Phillips writes, "When Sasha finishes one of his special sets, people are liable to get emotional. You could call it trance. I call it magic." It was precisely hyperbole such as this that made Global Underground: San Francisco such an anticipated release. After all, though Sasha spun on occasion at Twilo in New York or in cities like Miami and San Francisco, most stateside listeners had only the hyperbole to base their image of the iconic DJ on. And though the "trance sucks" crowd will venomously deny it forever, Global Underground: San Francisco lived up to its hype. Not coincidently, thousands of stateside hipsters suddenly championed the trance scene. Sasha had converted them. Here's how: For the most part, he devotes the first disc of this album to progressive house and the second to trance. However, it's important to note that he drops only proven anthems by the style's best producers: Albion, Quivver, Breeder, Oliver Lieb, BT, Tilt, and more. So, essentially, stateside listeners were getting a very distilled sample of the late-'90s progressive scene, similar to what Paul Oakenfold did on the first Tranceport album. And that's precisely why Sasha struggled to better this mix in subsequent years -- it's one of the best mix albums to surface during the late-'90s trance craze, featuring the best the era had to offer before the movement eventually became over-saturated, exhausted, and increasingly dreary rather than euphoric. ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide
'The Qat Collection, Version 2'
Release Date 9/26/1994
Tracks 8
Label Deconstruction
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