With Global Underground nearly upon us (30th August), we talk to the mighty Sasha himself about all things from parties to production and the eagerly anticipated launch of Involver2.
Hello Sasha, thank you so much for letting us interview you! It’s been four years since the last Involver album was released to critical acclaim, do you think the sound and the scene have changed much during this time?
Yeah, I think everything’s changed! I didn’t even go into the studio for a good two and a half to three years after the last Involver record was released and then we moved the studio from Florida to New York and it took us some time to find a space in New York that was going to work, so by the time it came around to working on the record a lot of things had changed for me personally but also generally, musically, there’s been a huge change in the sound. We spent a good part of 2007 just working on finding the direction and finding the sound and where we wanted to go with the record and that’s why we were working on a lot of original music last year, the Emfire stuff, we kind of used that as an exorcise in finding the sound for what Involver2 was going to be. Releasing that stuff on Emfire has helped set up this Involver.
You’ve almost answered my next question there! How did you approach working on Involver2, and what was your inspiration when getting down to it?
Well it came together very differently to the last record, when we put that one together we already had the first and the last tunes sorted very quickly early on, we had the Grand National thing and we had the Ulrich Schnauss tracks in place and it was a case of how are we going to get from Grand National to Ulrich Schnauss and what we should put in between, whereas with this record the final track listing only really came together last month of recording and we still added a couple of extra tracks right in the last few weeks of recording. I think the thing about this last record is I really wanted to cast the net a bit wider in terms of the artists we were looking at so I was listening to a lot of music that hadn’t necessarily come from the electronic music scene, whereas with Involver everything came out of my record boxes really. This time I was listening to a lot of music away from the places where I’d looked for the last record, and that is where we found things like Telafon Telavive, Ray Lamontagne, The Engineers; those tracks came out of trying to dig in places that maybe I hadn’t looked for the last Involver.
Have you had much feed back from the artists featured on the CD?
Well everyone’s approved it, all the managers and the bands have requested that they get copies of the mixes very quickly and I think its been met with approval. I haven’t had any direct feedback from the artists but I think everyone is happy!
Were there any tracks that you wanted to include but that you couldn’t squeeze on or find a place for?
There were a lot of tracks that ended up on the cutting room floor, as I said the whole track listing didn’t come together until the last minute so there was a lot of other music that we had the parts too but that didn’t up fitting on the album in the end. Luckily though we’ve been able to do a limited edition CD and so four or five of the tracks that we had finished but that didn’t really fit on the first album have gone on there. Its meant that most of the music we worked on ended up seeing the light of day but there were definitely a few tracks that we had the parts too but that we ended up not mixing because the track listing took a different direction.
On the 30th you’ve got a fellow New Yorker playing alongside you in the form of Three, excellent talent in the studio and on the decks, have you caught him play before?
Well we’re good friends actually and we play together a lot. We do these little nights in New York called ‘Star Spangled’ where we just announce things on Friday night and then do an all-day party on the Sunday, its just an excuse really for me and Chris to play music for hours and hours and you really get deep into it. Three also does a great night down in Tampa called ‘Snatch’ which I’ve played at which is fantastic and he’s supported me on a lot of my American tour dates, so when he was talking about coming over to Europe and these dates came up at Ministry of Sound and there are a few other dates in Europe as well, I thought it was a good opportunity to get him over here. He’s a fantastic DJ, he’s really got a musical ear as well so it’s always a pleasure to play with him, he’s really on the cutting edge and I just find it inspiring to play with him.
The Manager of the Club here is a huge Northern Exposure fan and wants to see you and John Digweed revisiting it, dare we suggest you bringing it here?
Umm I don’t know really, that was then and we’ve moved on musically, both John and I, but it would be good to go back and make a Northern Exposure sounding album, the thing about that album though is that we had such an amazing selection of records to choose from which no-one had ever put on a CD before so to find those kind of classics now that no one else has used is virtually nigh on impossible. Having said that, there has been some really beautiful electro break-beat music that’s been out over the last 10 years and it might be a good idea to put them on a CD together but it’s not something I have got in mind at the moment.
Techno aside, what non-dance music stuff is doing it for you right now?
Well there’s an album we listened to quite a lot by ‘Panda Bear’ – which sounds like the Beach Boys trapped in a Dub chamber which is really good. There’s also this White Williams album which we listened to a lot as well, we bought it because it has the most crazy messed up 80s retro looking cover and it sort of sounds like XTC mixed with a bit of Human League! There’s also Dan Deacon, I know it’s electronic but he’s very wonky and some of the stuff on Youtube is just so inspiring and hilarious and brilliant at the same time, his appearance no the morning show doing cartoon music is absolutely insane, but then there’s also a live performance of him at the Pitch Fork festival in Brooklyn and he’s in the middle of the crowd and all the crowd are singing along with him and I think its one of the most uplifting inspiring performances I’ve ever scene.
Your house is flooding, you’ve got five mins to salvage your records what ones would you reach for first?
I imagine my Hacienda classics because they’re very hard to find, all the DJ International stuff, that’s prob’s the stuff I’d go for first because that’s my heritage right there.
Thank you Sasha it's been a pleasure! We look forward to seeing you in the Box at Global Underground!
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