Sasha Interview auf 4clubber.net Einstellungen

[Neo]

Sasha, the man once hailed as ‘Son Of God’ by Mixmag has had a DJ career spanning over 15 years and in the time he’s been responsible for shaping the face of dance music, creating the ‘’progressive’ house movement (alongside partner John Digweed) and toured the globe always putting 150% into his true passion… DJ’ing.

As Sasha prepare’s for his 2nd year headlining the South West Four festival we catch up with the man like to find out what he’s been working on lately:

Your recent Fundacion parties at Crobar NY and Avalon in LA seem to have re-energised both you and the club scene.  What have been your highlights?
It’s been brilliant for me because I was living in New York at the time and it meant I could get a cab to work! That was the biggest highlight because it’s very rare for me, usually it takes a couple of plane and hotels, which is great, but for once in my life to go to work in a taxi was amazing.  The way it came together was really great with the whole team and the production and going back to New York after Twilo was great.

I used it as a testing ground for the new computer and the way the crowd embraced all that was really exciting.  I went into it with some kind of trepidation but it ended up working out really well.  The fact that I got to host my own night, something that I hadn’t ever really done before, was great.  It was nice to be able to invite people like James Lavelle, James Zabiela and John Digweed to my night – I had never done that before.

And how was it different to the days at Twilo?
Well it’s a different kind of club for sure.  Twilo had this low ceiling. It was a dark room with a thudding sound system and it was very much about the music. You just got lost in that room – it was an intense place to be – you couldn’t hang around in that room if you weren’t feeling up for it. 

Crobar have gone for a VIP bar around the edges, they’ve still got an amazing sound system and an amazing show on the dancefloor but it’s a much bigger room and a different vibe to Twilo.  People are constantly comparing the two but you can’t really compare them – they’re different kinds of clubs.  It’s about the same size in floor space; the ceiling is about 3 times as high – I think it used to be a car park.  The whole vibe of Twilo, because it had that low ceiling, just created a kind of pressure cooker – it was great. And crobar’s been great but on a different level. 

The Avalon gig in LA was also really great I was really pleased with that.  That was the gig I was most unsure about because I’d never done a residency in LA. I’d only played there once or twice a year maximum and I knew the trance thing was really big there in 2001 / 2002. It was massive there so I was a little bit nervous whether it was actually going to work but the club was fantastic and the people in LA seemed to really embrace the night. They really appreciated the guests that I had on. 

The Avalon show allowed me to bring on some younger more unknown guests.  The New York show was more about the big boys but with the LA show – the night was just insane anyway so I could put on people like Steve Porter who weren’t so established and they obviously had a really good time and they were really accepted by the crowd there. It was really good.

I couldn’t pick a favourite out of the two as I enjoyed both of them for very different reasons – I was very pleased the LA show worked and with the New York show it was just great to be back there and of course new York was my home town for a few months so it was nice.

We heard that there were a few A-list celebs hanging out at your LA shows – is this true?  Did they enjoy the Fundacion experience?
Yeah that was the thing about LA, there would be some megastar hanging around the dj booth, which was great.  Bruce Willis was there because he’s part owner of Avalon so he was there a couple of times and had his birthday there.  Dan Akroyd was there.  And a lot of young Hollywood faces that you’d recognise from The OC and people like that.  And some of the British ex-pats were there.  But hanging out with Bruce was definitely a highlight.

Any plans to bring Fundacion to the UK?
I’m thinking about it, there are a few plans on the table right now; I’ve definitely got something in the pipeline for next year hopefully.  I miss home – I really miss home.  I’m not cutting off my roots from England.  And I definitely feel that I’m not here regularly enough.  I’m always here in the summer but I’d like to do some regular things here so at least four times a year people know I’m going to be in the same place.  I’d like to do a Fundacion party here definitely.

It has been well documented that you have been using new technology to dj – how did you come up with the idea of the new controller you are using?
I’ve been using the software [Ableton] in the studio for quite a while and I realised I could use it to dj with but there wasn’t any controller on the market that you could use with it and the idea of djing with just a mouse just wasn’t ideal. It looks wrong, it feels wrong, its just wrong and I thought ‘how can I get around that’ and I found out there’s ways of building your own controller so I hooked up with a friend of mine who’s a complete electronic boffin who helped me source the parts and helped design the thing and we did it together over nine months and ended up with a sexy piece of kit that I feel comfortable djing with. 

If you’re going to get rid of turntables then you’ve got to have something that looks and feels right the tactile element is really important – if you’re just clicking away on a mouse its not right.  It was important that I had something rugged that I could bash around. You know I’m always touring - always in and out of airports, so I needed something portable that I could throw over my shoulder that could take a few knocks. So we built this metal cased controller – it looks like a dj mixer covered in coloured buttons and it looks great.

You are someone who is always one step ahead, you’re an innovator – what do you have up your sleeve for the future?  Where would you like to take things next?
I think I’m at the mercy of the technology as everyone else is.  Not just in terms of the technology but also in terms of the music, it’s about keeping an open mind.  As soon as you get closed minded about things you can get stale and you can get tied down.  You just have to keep an open mind about things and that then allows things to come to you.  I don’t really know what’s next but I’m excited to see what bit of technology comes out or what the next musical movement is as long as I’m part of it I’ll be excited about it. 

Predicting what’s around the corner is dangerous.  For myself, I think for the last 12 months I’ve been aware that for a while I was almost neglecting my dj career – not through lack of work but lack of commitment to it and lack of love for it.  Back in 2002 / 2003 the sheer volume of gigs I had to do back to back made me fall out of love for it.  This last year and a half, getting into Ableton, making the Involver record and taking Ableton out on the road meant I put all my energy into that and its worked - its revitalised my dj career. It’s given me a shot in the arm.  Even if it doesn’t appear like that from the outside – people may think that not much has changed - but for me personally it has.  If things had continued they way they were back then I’d probably be thinking now about jacking it in.  I was really feeling quite despondent about my dj sets and where I was going to go.  I cut back a lot and spent more time in the studio and that’s how the Ableton thing came about.

I’m aware that I’m the one getting a lot of press about Ableton but there’s people that have been using this program to dj with, especially some of the techno dj’s in Germany since it came out three or four years ago, but it was really unstable then and really glitchy.  It’s only been in the last 18 months that it’s become stable enough to use it properly within live performances.  But yes I’ve really spent the last 12 months focusing on my djing again and maybe over the next 12 months I’ll start focusing on my production again.  But I’m really enjoying djing again, I’m really buzzing about things again.

Well it must be a strain being on tour all the time?
Touring is hard, losing sleep, travelling all the time but its good now when I’m excited about what I’m doing.

What plans do you have for Fundacion at Space this summer? 
I’m really looking forward to it, its good to be involved with Darren again.  It’s been a couple of years since I’ve really done something there.  I was the Space resident for two or three years on the trot. Space had always been my club and it was in 2002 when I was still doing Twilo and had the summer at Space, so one week I was in Spain the next in New York and I was back and forth the whole time. After that I had to have a couple of years off from Space so I did Pacha for Renaissance for a couple of years, which was great. I really enjoyed playing Pacha again.  But for my birthday last year I played Space and I realised how much I missed it.  Darren presented this idea of doing a new Thursday night that really interested me and doing it with Steve Lawler as well who is the Terrace legend. To do it back to back with him is something I am really excited about

So after Ibiza, you’re going to take Fundacion to Japan – tell us a little more about that?
I’m going out there for a month and hosting Fundacion at Womb, which is my favourite club out there.  There’s a couple of other clubs in Tokyo that are great – Yellow, which is a smaller place and it’s amazing.  But I chose Womb because I love it.  The guys that designed Womb used to live in New York when Twilo was on there and they were insistent on creating that kind of club in Tokyo. So they actually got the Twilo sound system and had it built at Womb.  It’s got an amazing energy in that club.  I’ve only started playing Japan in the last two or three years and my name went from zero to one hundred out there very quickly through a couple of strong gigs at Womb so I’m really looking forward to actually hosting it for a month.  Jeff Mills does that once a year in the summertime and it really works. 

I’ll probably do a couple nights on my own and a couple where i invite guests to play with me; we haven’t quite worked it out yet. Its great to do a big long set on my own, but then there’s some dj’s that I love playing with and I get a real energy from playing back to back with them and a different set comes out of me.  Playing with other dj’s really pushes you in different directions.  I played with Josh Wink recently at Crobar and he ended up making me play like a techno dj, it was amazing.  It was so much fun I was grabbing bits of his set, he was looping bits from mine, it was constant loops and filters - just this wall of sound and everyone was saying ‘fucking hell it sounds so different’.  He kept on pushing me to play in a different way, it wasn’t like I was playing whole tracks - I was grabbing bits of tracks and looping them it was really exciting. 

And then playing with someone like Lee Burridge at the Exit Festival in Serbia recently - you’ve got a whole different sound, really funky and twisted sound.  It just keeps you fresh playing with other dj’s.  You can spend so much time on the road on your own; you can get caught up in your own bubble, its good to keep mixing things up.


You released the Involver album last year and the Fundacion NYC album this year, will there be more of those albums?
Yes they’re both mini series.  I’m hosting nights in LA, Ibiza and Tokyo so we’ll definitely chose another one of those locations to do another album.  And also with Involver I’ve already got about half the tracklisting together for the next one. I’ve got a good idea of the music that I want to use.  I’m not sure yet in what order they’ll come but definitely in the early part of next year I’ll be working on one of those.

It seems people have been quite impressed with a change to your musical style with FundacionNYC
Well this is one of the great things with Ableton - it allows you to jump around genres quite seamlessly and I didn’t even push it that far with this album.  I’ve done after-hours sets or things like the Essential Mix where I haven’t got a dancefloor in front of me where you can really play around with genres - its so much fun.  I’ve just started buying records from a much more diverse source, I’m still getting my core dance music that I’ve always got from 3 beat in Liverpool and the same places I usually do but I’m going to all these weird and wonderful little records shops now in Soho and buying weird little albums and if there’s a two minute piece of music that I like its going into the computer and I’m chopping it up and using it.  I’m pulling music from much more diverse sources which is exciting.

It was over 15 years ago that you started djing at the Hacienda – did you ever think you’d be where you are now?  How have things changed? 
The thing about the days of the Hacienda we felt like every summer was our last.  When it closed in 1990 the first time, because of all the trouble, they just put a sign up to say that it was closed and we were all devastated.  We thought it was the end of the scene.  It would always die off anyway in the winter up north and when it came back in the spring we always felt a relief – thank god for that.  So we never even thought it was going to last more than three or four years.  It was only 1993/94 when I started getting offered gigs around the world and I got the cover of Mixmag I suddenly realised I had a career and it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. 

Do you think you’ll still be doing this in another 15 years?
I cant see myself touring forever the way that I do now but I want my djing career to go on for as long as possible - perhaps with more residencies and less travelling in the years to come.

Catch Sasha at this South West Four Festival Next Week, not to mention Sasha & Digweed’s exclusive 3 hr Back2Back set at the official afterparty!

More info www.southwestfour.com

Quelle: 4clubbers.net


Zusatzinfo: Im Interview wirds zwar nicht erwähnt aber Sasha wird den ersten Track vom neuen DM Album remixen 'precious'

Der Beitrag wurde von Neo bearbeitet: 20 Aug 2005, 00:47

[Neo]

blöde frage aber interessierts überhaupt?

[Rabbitweed]

ja.

[dezibel]

me too


btw: wen's interessiert: sasha NYE 2006 @ kristal club bucharest www.clubkristal.ro

(IMG:http://www.technoboard.at/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) (IMG:http://www.technoboard.at/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[Neo]

It seems people have been quite impressed with a change to your musical style with FundacionNYC
Well this is one of the great things with Ableton - it allows you to jump around genres quite seamlessly and I didn’t even push it that far with this album.  I’ve done after-hours sets or things like the Essential Mix where I haven’t got a dancefloor in front of me where you can really play around with genres - its so much fun.  I’ve just started buying records from a much more diverse source, I’m still getting my core dance music that I’ve always got from 3 beat in Liverpool and the same places I usually do but I’m going to all these weird and wonderful little records shops now in Soho and buying weird little albums and if there’s a two minute piece of music that I like its going into the computer and I’m chopping it up and using it.  I’m pulling music from much more diverse sources which is exciting.

jetzt mal von ableton abgesehen hat sasha mehr oder weniger zu einem anderen style gefunden, wars vor gut 3 jahren noch in erster linie trance und progtrance, ist es doch jetzt eher electro lastiger, grooviger oder auch progressiver, zum teil spielt er dann auch viel mehr deutsche produktionen!

ich muß ja gestehen das mir diese wandlung sehr gefällt, ja sogar fjo war doch von der fundacion playlist begeistert (nun ja zumindest angetan (IMG:http://www.technoboard.at/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ).
nichts desto trotz finde ich seine global underground ibiza welche ja eigentlich nur in richtung trance geht einmalig!

stillstand ist der tod wie eye-q so schön sagt und dieser ist bei sasha definitiv nicht vorhanden