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Sasha - Arkham Asylum - 22-Aug-09 05:43 PM
Most people out there know that most of Sashas 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, Sashas 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 theres 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 Horses Careful) you can hear a distinct production sound to the Dekkard era. The production isnt 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 Sashas 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. Ive never heard a DJ play more than half of Ohmna, but I think Sashas 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.

Paul van Dyk - Forbidden Fruit - 25-Mar-09 08:13 PM
This is, for me, Paul Van Dyks best single by a long shot (taken from his best album by a long shot), and one of the very finest examples from the golden mid-90s era of progressive trance, just after the genre had developed from its classic German roots and just before it became overblown Euro-tosh.

The original version of Forbidden Fruit found on Seven Ways is a very nice trance record from the Cosmic Baby school of intertwining pretty melodies but this single release a year later really steps up the production side of things with three superb new mixes.

Of PVDs two new versions, the "Fruit Of Love" mix retains most of the originals melodies and uplifting mood, but boasts considerably more sophisticated percussion and synth programming. The "Forbidden Future" mix, in keeping with its name, takes the track in a darker and more futuristic direction with a pumping, synth-driven sound.

While these two versions are excellent in their own right, the collaboration with BT for the "Food Of Love" mix is the real highlight. Comparisons with the other big BT & PVD collaboration of 1997- Flaming June- are inevitable, but this is darker, harder and altogether more ferocious than that summery anthem. From the punchy breakbeat intro to BTs trademark classy piano chords in the breakdown via hair-rising acid riffs and devastatingly clear production, this is an absolute monster of a track.

This is a practically unrecognisable PVD from the one putting out pap such as White Lies today, and if you ever want to convince someone that he was once a great producer, these three mixes will speak volumes.

Orbital - Snivilisation - 06-Jan-09 11:06 PM
Good records often have special memories you associate with them. Great records, however, make their own special moments. My special moment with Snivilisation came in the July of 2008 when I discovered the album happened to have almost the exact same duration as a train journey between Doncaster and Manchester Picadilly train stations. A cross-country train journey doesnt seem the kind of experience that immortalises a piece of music, but there was something oddly fitting about listening to Orbitals savage critique of modern society in the sterile blue-grey plastic confines of modern public transport.

This was Orbitals first commercial smash- it deservedly cracked the UK Top 5 in the album charts in 1994 after their legendary performance at Glastonbury. Years ahead of its time, it must have sounded absolutely cutting-edge then and was really the moment when Orbital broke away from the conventions of established dance music and went their own unique, brilliant way. Its also a surprisingly effective social commentary, as the Hartnoll brothers scatter the record with old sound recordings of freak shows and political diatribes alongside soundbites of advertisements for bourgeois services such as plastic surgery clinics and colleges offering philosophy courses. The amount of sneering irony they create through the most economical uses of samples, which never threaten to drown out the musical innovations, is astonishing.

It turned out that Snivilisation was about 12 minutes longer than the train journey, and as I stepped out into the vast, arched open space that is the Victorian station at Manchester, the air warm and still and golden with summer sunshine, the swirling euphoric strains of Attached made me feel as though I was floating as I walked off the platform and headed for my next train. A beautiful moment to close a quite brilliant album.

Spooky - Don't Panic - 10-Sep-08 09:54 AM
Spookys first single on the legendary Guerilla label sounds a bit of an oddity today. A dubby bassline and some ravey hooks are combined with a frankly bizarre vocal created by pitching up two samples- the "Ive got a broken face, uh-huh huh..." line from The Pixies and "Suckers they be saying they can take out Adam Horovitz" from The Beastie Boys, Shake Your Rump. It all sounds a bit gimmicky compared to the lush progressive house Spooky would go on to make within a year, but what it lacks in classiness it certainly makes up for in catchiness.

John Digweed - Renaissance - The Mix Collection Part 2 - 09-Jun-08 03:54 PM
Id read almost unanimous praise for this compilation online, and being a big fan of the mid-90s progressive sound which Renaissance championed, I paid decent money for it second hand. Having listened to it now, I have to stick my neck out and disagree with just about everyone else: The Mix Collection 2 is a big disappointment. Not because of the music- there are plenty of fantastic tracks here- but almost entirely because of John Digweed.

We all know Diggers can and has mixed this style of music very well- you can track down his old Essential Mixes from 1995 that prove it, but here he just seems to get it totally wrong. Time and again he deviates from his trademark ultra-smooth blends and is too keen to try and be cute and clever with his mixing, and many of the transitions are just too chaotic and busy to actually enjoy the music. He also gets several big things wrong. Take the back-to-back mixes of One Earth Beat. Sasha did this on a EM from May 95 and the result was a ten minute dancefloor bomb. However, when Diggers has finished faffing around with the mixing in and out he only actually lets the combined mixes play for about three minutes, mixing out long before the Dream Of Life mix has finished and making the whole exercise pointless.

I also have no idea what hes doing with the second mix of Sacred Cycles- a fantastic track but we only ever hear the extensive intro, which kills the momentum of the disc for a good four minutes to tee up the closing track, which is another bad decision. No-one in the right mind would deny that Compass Error is a fantastic record, but its a grooving progressive houser, not a climactic set closer and should have been dropped much earlier in the disc. After setting it up with such drama with Sacred Cycles, Digweed needed to have a big pay-off track to justify it, and he got it wrong.

The other big problem is that the discs lack structure. Disc One spends a long time with warm-up vocal tracks, but when it begins to to go somewhere with the Moby and Dum Dum tracks, that direction is lost with a meandering Hardfloor remix and then the murky POB track to close on. Disc Three is easily the best- it has a great flow and No Other Love in its 11-minute glory makes for an excellent climax. Even then Digweed basically lets the mix stop and then starts again from ambient scratch with Children- surely only there to sell a few more copies, because it feels like a post-script in the context of the discs programming.

I have to question whether Digweed got any say in the tracklisting process, because none of these discs sound like they were programmed by him, which is perhaps why he decided to try something different with his mixing style. Most damningly, whoever did the mix-down decided to turn the bass up nice and high, which means you can hear every transition coming from a mile off. As soon as John overlays two kick-drums the beat gets noticably thicker, and all those clever-clever mixes he makes lose all their subtlety because its so obvious the track is changing.

The Mix Collection Part 2 scrapes a 4/5 from me because theres just so many brilliant records used, and you cant keep good tunes down. Unfortunately, John Digweed wont want reminding of the job he did mixing them all together.

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