Sasha - Arkham Asylum

Most people out there know that most of Sasha's music was produced with a lot of help from various engineers and co-producers. I have a theory that Arkham Asylum/Ohmna is the only Sasha single produced entirely by the man himself. Read on...

In the Qat era, Sasha's tracks were co-produced by Tom Frederikse, and from his remix of Reese Project until Be As One/Heart Of Imagination by Richard Dekkard. Dekkard was brought in to teach Sasha his way around the studio so he could start work on his fabled album. What follows the split from working with Dekkard is hazy. We know Sasha eventually wound up working with Charlie May, a collaboration which survives from Xpander to the present day. We also know he did credited remixes in collaboration with Brothers In Rhythm and The Light. But there's no record of who engineered his other works in the interim.

In an interview in DMA Magazine from the period, Dekkard said the following about his split from Sasha: "I felt confident that [Sasha] had the knowledge to do his album on his own from that point forward, because I had watched him do demos and they were good." So Sasha had clearly learned enough to be able to produce decent material on his own. If you listen to Arkham Asylum, Ohmna and other Sasha remixes from this 96/97 era (such as his "Horse With No Name" remix of Horse's Careful) you can hear a distinct production sound to the Dekkard era. The production isn't so elaborate, there are less stutter edits, intricate synth programming and so on. They sound like the work of a less talented producer than any of Sasha's helpers, which is perhaps why he gave up on doing it all himself after a couple of years.

Anyway, whoever produced this record it probably benefits from that understated sound. This is really lush, atmospheric progressive house with everything: intros, outros, builds and stirring central stretches. I've never heard a DJ play more than half of Ohmna, but I think Sasha's determination to write such versatile pieces that could be played anywhere in a set really gives them home listening value when played in full. The complete tracks are so big it takes a couple of listens to see the whole picture, but this EP takes you right out there and back again.

A beautifully haunting addition to Sasha's artistic career. Back in 1996 when modern progressive-house was finding its feet, the DJ/producer was already busy creating pieces far ahead of their time.

Arkham Asylum itself is more an experience than a piece of dance music; in turn warm and uplifting, to dark and unnerving. There is very little repitition here, as with his other work, and the 13 odd minutes genuine fly by.

Ohmna is more clearly devided into movements; opening with dark, striking chords, then suddenly taking on a more picturesque form around the 5 minute mark. The latter stages of the piece are quite reminiscent of Orbital's 'Halcyon'.

A definite landmark in the uphill battle of establishing electronic music as an art-form.