Involver

So Sasher, sorry Sasha, is back.

Global Underground and BMG, not to mention the hordes of fans worldwide, have been on his back, dying for a new slice of his musical pie since his previous solo compilation in 1999 - GU013 Ibiza (marked as one of the greatest CDs of its time). One can only imagine the immense pressure he would have been under in creating Involver - an album set to be one of the most revered, compared and reviewed albums of 2004.

The first two introductory tracks feature immaculate vocals. They play the vital part of setting a strongly produced slate for Sasha to present the rest of the mix with a perfect lead in.

The beautiful and highly regarded 'These Days' by Stockholm born newcomer, Petter, receives a brief touch of Sasha’s recreation. It does work very well and is surprisingly the only track on the CD without some form of vocal. It leads and continues nicely into the warming Unkle ‘What are you to me?’ mix that follows.

It is the two remakes of tracks originally released in 2002 where Sasha really starts to get down the business end of things with Involver. Firstly The Youngsters with their 'Smile' featuring a strong bassline and the raw electro sounds that have made the French artists so successful.

Charlie May & Duncan Forbes, well known for their previous progressive productions under their Spooky moniker, continue the mix with 'Belong' - and Sasha's new edit. The original mix, prior to Sasha's touch, is undoubtedly one of the finest ambient progressive releases of its kind, so it is no surprise that this update is nothing short of exceptional. It's brought in ever so simply, with Julie Daske's beautiful female vocals, that work their way into your head and you will become addicted. And then, the simple and understated bassline drops in followed by the thick and amazingly formed chords roll through the track that together with the vocals cement it as extraordinary.

Slotting in seamlessly is his new remix of Unkle’s 'In A State'. This mix proves the point of the excessive time Sasha has put into Involver, being (as many of you would know) his second take on the track (the first featuring on James Lavelle's Barcelona GU026 comp), and I must add, his most impressive... by far... making both his previous and the original look average at best. Simple, energetic, uplifting and vibrant.

Following on is his rework of 'Burma', the latest track from Melbourne based production duo Lostep, Phil K (one of Australia’s finest DJs) and Luke Chable (one of Australia's finest producers). To be honest it isn’t their best work and the original left a fair bit to be desired, but Sasha has filled the void, really taking it to the next level it needed with this twelve minute version.

It is at this moment, 60 odd minutes in, where I need to stop and make the point that you can not fault Sasha with much on the music he has presented. You would be hard pressed to find a mix out in the current period that comes close to this sequence of music. This being said, the faultless ride appears to slide to an abrupt halt with the next track...

The beginning of the end of this amazing climb through music is his tweak of Felix Da Housecat's 'Watching Cars Go By'. It is definitely the weakest link in this compilation. Sure it's electro and that may be a cool thing at the moment, it could widen the appeal and maybe sell a few extra copies, and on it's own it is some nice production - but it doesn’t suit the compilation as a whole. There are just 2 pieces that remain to be slotted in this 10 piece puzzle and this isn't one that fits. Worst of all it leaves the final track somewhat stranded. It is only when it mixes away to the electro vocal of ‘I am no cyber whore’ that things get back on track.

The driving bassline of Sasha's stunning remix of Ulrich Schnauss' 'On My Own', is the homerun that knocks Involver into the stratosphere of legendary music. He turns Ulrich's previously ambient sounds into a peak time dance floor filler and you will be hearing this tune right throughout summer.

Overall, Involver is Sasha at his best! His style of beautiful, timeless and musical art heralds in a new era of mixing. Sasha shows us why he is still one of the leading artists in the industry by pushing the boundaries of electronic music ever further. Almost perfectly compiled, edited, remixed, mastered, and produced.

It's not really a remix album, although all the tracks have been remixed by Sasha himself specifically for this CD, and cannot be found anywhere else. It's not really an original production, although for fans of Airdrawndagger you can feel the Sasha influence through all the tracks - they might be written by other people, but the quality of the mixes leave me to think that they belong 50% to Sasha now anyway (If you see what I mean). It's not really a mix compilation either, even though yes the tracks are seemlessly mixed to create a single set.

It's as though when putting this CD together, Sasha has decided to create a single 78 minute long piece of remixed music. It doesn't go "Track 1, transition to track 2, track 2, transition to track 3..." etc like most mix albums. In keeping tradition with earlier output (most obviously the early Northern Exposure ones) there is far too much overlap to list the music in such a serial manner. If you ever listened to the 1st CD on NE1, and marvelled at the mix from "Liquid cool" to "Last Train to Lhasa", and then read the sleevenotes and realised that it's was so good because because he was playing 3 tracks at the same time for about 5 minutes (Liquid cool, and 2 versions of Last Train at the same time) then you can expect more of the same - but the whole CD is like this.

For example, track 3 (Nice bit of bleepy music with an unusual rythem similar to requiem from Airdrawndagger) morphs beautifully into track 4, and you aren't going to spot the transition by listening because there isn't a simple fade in and out mix happening here And it's no good watching for the track number switching, because it's there merely to show that you are progressing further into the mix, rather than that you are now on track 4, etc. Part way through track 5, when on the tail end of some vocal, the bleeps from track 3 are back. Yet it all works so well that unless you are watching the track numbers pass while trying to analyse how it's been done, rather than listening to it properly, you would hardly believe that you are not listening to a single incredibly long remix of a great record.

You cannot really say that you like tracks 4 and 8, or track 3 for example, you can only really say that you like the bit between, say, 10 and 30 minutes, and forget that there is any distinction between seperate parts of the music on a track basis.

Anyway, that's enough about the production values of the CD. On a more specific basis, I was surprised at the amount of vocal content in here. Pretty much every track, and real lyrics at that rather than just a quick vocal sample here and there. Not that I can make out many of the words (not my strong point anyway), as all the vocals have been processed rather heavily, and very cleverly too because as before with the music, the vocals thoughout the CD are consistently in the same style and meld through to each other without clashing.

There is a very varied bpm running through the CD, ranging from anwhere around 115, through around 135, which again is a big departure for a mix CD. You can't spot it changing tempo, but it does, and as a rule is a little slower than you might expect. The closest I can think of would be the Global Underground "Electric Calm" CDs, which I suppose where the forerunners to this CD, with The Forth taking a similar "Edit them together" rather than "Mix them together" approach to the production.

Overall, I would recommend this CD to pretty much anyone, I love it.

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...