INVOLVER [CD]

The Involver tackles the problem right at the heart. Sasha gets stuck right in at what he's doing best, in this case providing entirely exclusive remixes of his favourite tracks, and then seamlessly blending them together in a building 80 minute journey. If you wanted to stick this in a pigeonhole, it would be a remix-artist album-mix collection. There are no such things as pigeonholes though. Pigeons wander around town centres, dumping over shopfronts. This is just pure Sasha.

The lovely deep disco of Grand Nation opens off proceedings. A nice low tempo'd funky track, builds tantalizingly before letting the vocal just float over it. Proves the rule that you don't have to have high tempos to be groovy. From there we smoothly shift to the baleric progressive of Shpongle, which contasts just perfectly to the melancholic synths of Petter's These Days. Naturally Sasha lays an acapella of UNKLE's What Are You To Me? effortlessly to great effect. The mix continues in this fashion, gently building with no massive drops into the next tune. A seamless landscape of sound. Some great highlights in the form of the Spooky remix, thundering along with a driving bassline, and The Youngster's Smile, a wickedly programmed electro groover with spine tingling shifts in moods. The excellent closer On My Own from Ulrich Schnauss was already a fantastic track. It now becomes an ecstatic breaksy wall of gorgeous synths. The Sasha biggie of the moment,! his remix of UNKLE's In A State becomes a nice bridging track ... cutting up the vocals and guitars, and shifting from house beats to progressive breaks.

This is a real journey, and there is the promise of future albums along this line from Sasha. Not the be all and end all of the mix album, in fact, still not as awe inspiring as his earlier sets such as the Northern Exposure series and the Renaissance Mix Collection, but a worthy mix none the less. Perhaps a much needed change in direction from Global Underground (which, thank god, was heading in the right direction with the 24:7 series). Lets see some more of this. Eagerly awaiting Digweeds Fabric effort to see how that balances out his DJing partners recent uberproduction.

Oh, naughty points to Global Underground (and any other label which is jumping on this ever increasing trend) of putting out an ordinany edition ... then a special edition in the most FRUSTRATING packaging (which I plumped for) before sticking out a special 'special' edition (in silver doggy bag) with bonus Sasha Classic Remix CD. We're not here to lap up every little morsel you stick in front of us...

Ever since I listened to the first Northern Exposure I have become hooked on Sasha's work. I find his choice of music subliminal and combines quirky tracks with elevating trancy style rythms.

Anyway when I purchased his latest work , 'Involver' I was expecting another quality addition to my collection. On first listen (whilst driving home) I was disappointed with the tracks he had chosen to mix, they seemed disjointed and a bit too quirky. However on further listening the CD has grown on me and is now a permanent addition to the car and house cd player. I find that tracks 3 and 4 (CD1) seem to be on continual playback as they are choice. As for the rest of the CD it is certainly one for the collection however i do not feel it is in the same league as the Northern Exposure or Expeditions collection.