Sasha: a singular adjective.
Sasha is responsible, along with John Digweed for showing the world what was happening in the UK club scene in the 90’s. Prior to the release of their mix 3 Disc Mix on Renaissance, Germany was the power houses of electronic music and Britain was considered the equivalent of Musaq in the burgeoning, worldwide EDM scene.
Without Sasha, the true majesty of modern progressive EDM, trance, arguably the clean, elegant jungle and DnB that Britain is so brilliant at doing, would not exist. Sasha and Digweed created a legitimacy of British EDM, a brand even (though I would argue this voice was a well honed feature of the british people long before this.. another article maybe).
But Sasha has always been critiqued- and I believe this an injustice- for his collaboration with other artists, sometimes even on his “solo” records. For example, the “Expander EP” has credited mixing duties from Charlie May and Duncan Forbes. Airdrawndagger was written in a collaborative group, between Sasha, Junkie XL and Charlie May again, Barry Jamieson, among others. Involver and Invol2ver featured a workgroup of familiar names, listed above, so did the Emfire Sessions, Coma, Mongoose, etc. etc.
Many listeners have given Sasha a hard time for this, questioning whether Alexander Coe is a talent unto himself or if his talent lies more in his ability to be the “founder of the feast.” As of late, I think Sasha has heard this concern, or possibly wondered what he himself had learnt in all of these years of group experimentation in sound design and music making. So, in what can be said in romantic form, Sasha moved to New York, created a small studio, along with a new label, Last Night on Earth and gave himself the task of discovering what he himself sounded like, alone.
This rather interesting act of solidarity must have been reasonably terrifying; he’d not worked on his own, outside of occasional remixing duties and DJ mixes in years. But here is Sasha, showing his true colors and remarkable production style with the release of “Cut Me Down.” It is beautiful, to say the least, clean and dare I say gorgeous in its scope, production and frankly, in the end, rather devious sounding. Elements creep up slowly and introduce themselves like villains. The track is wrapped up with miles of atmosphere and pads and a beautiful, toy piano arp. But the bassline harks back to the Engineers rework that was done for Invol2ver, with a visceral texture and percussive force. But “Cut Me Down” demonstrates something else, something deeper, that few people have stated, or rather few people have stated that I have been able to find in reviews: This is Alexander Coe at the helm. Working alone, beautifully demonstrating, in a culmination of a great deal of his classic sound involved here, that all of his records that we have questioned just how involved he was in their construction, he was their architect. He may have required technicians, or a helping hand to get him there, but Sasha has undoubtably proved, with a single track, that his vision of electronic music is forward thinking and singularly brilliant.
One side note, aside from my gushing for this track, I must warn you that the Layo & Bushwacka! remix, as usual, is boring, bad, repetitive jazz/house. I highly recommend Sasha’s original, and if you enjoy L&B’s sound, please check out the remix. But if you are not a fan of well, elevator music or new wave jazz, I suggest the original mix only.
itunes_link… um, there isn’t one… SHAME on you iTunes!! SHAME!
keep listening.
_backchat
