Sasha - Invol2ver

I have this cd, and have listened to it many times. There's some really brilliant tracks on here. The lead in track "You Are The Worst" is outstanding. The problem is, even now that this track is available on white label (along with a handful of others), I just can't bring myself to buy it. I'm sure that there are other people out there who feel the same way. Great music, but don't care enough to lay out a few bucks for it. Why is that? I think the problem is that all of the tracks on here, although different on the surface, pretty much sound the same. They are disposable. They are throw aways. Not immediate throw aways, but when I'm widdling down the wish list, and the budget is limited, there's always another record from a different artist that ends up being much more exciting than any of tracks from this release.

The mixing on this cd is perfect, the blends are perfect, the songs are mastered perfectly but I still dont like this cd. It smells like a dentists chair. It is stainless steel inside a science lab. Its the opposite of organic. Despite the warm bass, and soothing vocals here and there, the overall feeling is cold and computerized. At no point does this mix shift gears or do anything besides lazily plod along towards the middle of nowhere. I wish I could hear a modern mix cd where a track drifts out of sync, and is corrected via the touch of someones hand. I miss that connection with the dj. This cd, although not terrible, is a lowpoint for electronic dance music. Coming from someone like Sasha, it had the potential to be so much more. Instead of side-stepping the obvious trend he unfortunately fell into it. People will not care about this cd in 5 years the way they care about the first Involver now. Its a shame.

I hate to down "the man", but this mix really didn't do it for me. To be honest, Sasha's last few releases haven't been much good - Fundacion was just boring, EmFire collection was a waste of time. However, Involver 1 was very good - a beautiful, dreamy compilation that was very well mixed, so everyone had high expectations for this CD.

It starts off well with a parallel to Grand National, You Are The Worst Thing... it continues well with Flesh, before it gets to the sublime Midnight. And it's there that the mix just gets really boring - the main problem is that there's no progression, just well-mixed tracks looped together. The mix finally hits a high at Couleurs, after many yawns, and Sasha's own 3 Little Piggies is excellent, but a completely inappropriate Engineers track at the end brings you back down to Earth, when the track should've accentuated the high that was finally built up to.

My review was rather negative, and maybe I'm just not a fan of the minimal/electro style that's been around the last few years. But I think it's time to dig out the old GU013: Ibiza, GU009: San Francisco, Xpander EP or any of the Northern Exposures and forget about any new releases until this boring trend subsides.

It all depends on which Sasha you like best really. For me this was a complete snorefest from start to finish, there is not one track on this album that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up at all. Comming from a guy who has given so much quality over the years, this new direction is really limp copared to GU Ibiza, or GU San Fansisco. If i wanted chill out room music, i would have brought an Orb album!

What can be said about Alexander Coe, AKA DJ Sasha, that wasn't already said or written? Probably not much. Many DJ's and Producers in his caliber and age are long gone into the oblivion, the Hollywood honey trap or jumping from one rehab institution to another. Not Sasha. 4 years after successfully blurring the lines between terms DJ and Producer with his seminal Involver compilation/album/DJ mix he's back with this, second installment in the series. And while it's less genre defying and more straightforward club oriented compilation it's once again sends copious amounts of sheer brilliance through the whole 73 minutes of this CD. This one is a must for everybody who LOVES Electronic Music and it doesn't matter what color are your pants and with what hand you shake your glowsticks.
This is one of the few 2008 releases that you just cannot miss!