"Sasha keeps it earnest: the music pivots from moments of pure trance synths into straight up string sections, seasoning with percussion only when necessary. These very pure tones leave nowhere to hide and the production is unfussy, deliberate."
It has been 8 years since Sasha released ‘Scene Delete‘, his last full artist album for all intents and purposes. The years in-between feel like they have been a journey of discovery, seemingly looking to understand himself not as a producer or a DJ, but as an artist and creator. Specifically, the global pandemic feels like it was the catalyst for this introspection, a grand cessation in the ceaseless churn of the touring DJ.
During this time, Sasha returned to his home in Ibiza. Music didn’t stop and he began to play live streams of lighter, foamier material away from his usual clubland wares. This began the LUZoSCURA phase: a Spotify playlist that gathered inspirational music from the left-of-field, which in turn spawned a radio show for OpenLab before becoming a compilation in its own right – showcasing fresh talent (such as Central Processing Unit’s Typheme) and artists plucked from worlds adjacent to the usual realm of progressive (namely UK Garage stalwart MJ Cole, electronic maestro Rival Consoles and Nocow from Russian electronica outfit Gost Zvuk).
Streaming efforts even saw a session beamed directly into a virtual rendering of Burning Man, something that even a lapsed raver dad like myself could enjoy, jigging around the bedroom as my virtual likeness glided around with some very “online gaming 1.0” renditions of other clubbers.
While that tells one side of the story, the performer probing around the boundaries of his art, his life as a producer was also being stretched. His catalogue began to swell at pace, often working alongside new artists presumably in an effort to shepherd in a new wave of artists. This is not unwelcome to a scene that still centres around the legacy names of peak Global Underground. Then there was the nature of what music ownership meant in the digital world being challenged, with the LNOE TEN project spanning some exceptionally rare vinyl and digital NFT media collections.
This then led to his next project, the Da Vinci: Genius art installation that is currently making its way worldwide after initially launching in Berlin. In his role of musical director, his music provides the backdrop for a fully immersive 360 visual installation that celebrates the life of the aforementioned genius. Da Vinci Genius uses each of those years of experience to create the soundtrack, finding his sense of what a performance is, how to expand his sound into the unexpected, and even a little collab moment with LNOE newie Sentre. ‘Da Vinci Genius‘ is the culmination, and possibly unlike any Sasha album you would expect.
What is unchanged from the days of Scene Delete is the inspiration – Nils Frahm, Jon Hopkins, Hans Zimmer are cited once again. However in tone, it is more reminiscent of the Barbican iteration of his Refracted tour material, rather than the more raucous gig iteration I attended up here in Manchester. Touring with a string ensemble, Sasha leans in even harder on classical music for Da Vinci Genius, with music from Renaissance composer Josquin des Pres weaving threads between the original soundtrack.
For my purposes, electronic music and classical music are often uneasy bedfellows, haphazardly and ill-fittingly slapped together like a nice slice of Swarfega on toast or suffering to become a plodding renditions of ancient Ibiza classics. There’s a few ways to do it right: lean in to it, or spin it on its head. Sasha does the former and it works.
Remembering that this is a soundtrack to something visual, you’re often experiencing the unseen: narratives unfolding, leitmotifs that duck off stage and return to applause, holding of tension with weighty bass drops before a build to a crescendo. Sasha keeps it earnest: the music pivots from moments of pure trance synths into straight up string sections, seasoning with percussion only when necessary. These very pure tones leave nowhere to hide and the production is unfussy, deliberate.
At first the shift as to what you expect from a Sasha album and what you experience takes a while to get used to. Before long you find yourself caught up in the narrative, experiencing the emotional highs and internally celebrating those reoccurring leitmotifs. To say about Sasha that there is more than meets the eye isn’t quite right, more that there is more than your own expectations have so far allowed.
Dialling back to the time of his Fabric 99 mix, I remember an impromptu conversation between Call Super and Objekt on Twitter, both expressing surprise that he’d selected tracks from them for the session [note: only Objekt’s ‘Needle & Thread‘ made it on to the final mix]. A lesson: don’t underestimate someone who made their reputation as a formidable and technically accomplished selector.
One question now remains: where next for Sasha? Alkaane, the label created to host LUZoSCURA, remains in stasis since that inception – as a home for breaking through new artists and sounds, it would be a fantastic home for some of the throwback 90’s vibe progsters starting to come through, adjacent and unrelated to an often stagnant progressive scene. Plus could there be an opportunity for a follow up to the Refracted tour, to see Sasha and friends take the stage alongside a string section once again. However, for now, this moment when Renaissance man met Renaissance man stands firm as a fascinating curio.
‘Da Vinci Genius’ is out now via Night Time Stories. Order a copy from Bandcamp.
TRACKLIST
1. Mosaic
2. Elegy
3. Prelude
4. Intro – Homo Deus (with Felsman and Tiley)
5. Hands
6. Portraits
7. Equality
8. Clouds
9. Machines
10. Super Hero (With Sentre)
11. Descent
12. Zodiac
13. Zodiac Pt. 2 – Perpetual Dreamer (with Felsman and Tiley)
14. Landing On The Sun
15. Last Summer – Oxford Suite Pt. 1
16. Last Supper – Oxford Suite Pt. 2 (with Ed Alleyne Johnson)
17. Outro