Sasha: In The Blag.

Sasha plays the Friday night at the Adventjah Festival at the Arena, and December 3 at C-Moog in Byron Bay

One of the worlds true Superstar DJ’s, Sasha has been an artist who’s name is synonymous with quality. Both thru his sets and his outstanding production work, which has culminated this year in the release of his exceptional Airdrawndagger album. Unlike other superstar releases (Paul Oakenfold’s terrible Bunkka album) Sasha has stayed true to his art, developing his own distinct progressive style towards production, and not disappointing fans of his work as a DJ with trite and un-related production work.

He has in fact excelled in the realms of production, with the intimateness and humanity of the work on Airdrawndagger surprising most listeners. Before that the X-Pander EP also pushed the boundaries of contemporary club music, finding it’s way into most DJ’s record box within weeks, and indeed is now a rather hard to find piece of vinyl. His special touch has also recently been called upon by The Chemical Brothers, who singled him out as the only artist asked to remix a track (Out Of Control).

"I just dubbed it out to a style like I would play, the elements and sounds that the Chems used were so good that I didn't want to change them at all", Sasha reports on making the mix. Sasha's resume of chart topping remixes also earned him a request from Madonna in 1998 when he was asked to remix Ray Of Light and Substitute For Love / Drowned World.

This kind of recognition does not happen overnight. It’s earnt over many hard years. Born and raised in a small town in Wales, Sasha’s first exposure to house music was at Manchester's Hacienda; just as dance music exploded into the summer of love. Moving to Manchester, his first exploration into DJing was when a DJ in a local pub announced he was looking for people to play club dates. Sasha volunteered and now says that he "had about 30 records and basically just blagged it."

Sasha's first big break came when he was offered a residency at Stokes legendary club Shelly's, which became the launch pad for the residency at Renaissance, where Sasha created his niche and helped forge a new style in UK house music. At Renaissance two major things happened; Sasha mixed the first ever UK DJ mix album and he met John Digweed, which cemented the partnership known as Northern Exposure. Over the past couple of years, Sasha and John have played together on five continents, have mixed three Northern Exposure albums, which have sold to over 1 million people worldwide. This special brother like relationship that Sasha and Digweed have on the decks, is what landed them the monthly residency at New York's Twilo, following in the footsteps of Junior Vasquez and Danny Tenaglia. This residency has reached cult status in New York, and after going strong for over two years, it will continue well in to the millennium.

Earlier this year, a gruelling three month tour has taken their sound further out into deepest America, preaching a gospel of repetitive beats and imaginative mixing from coast to coast, and right through the mid western heartland of the States. After this gruelling gig a night tour he’s returning solo to Australia, playing in almost every city around the country. Sounds like a lot of hard work really, but when you job entails a new city every night and leading huge dancefloors to euphoric states, it’s not surprising that Sasha is working harder than ever.