Club-goers can to prepare to party with one of the world’s best crowd pleasers as Welsh spinner Sasha takes over the decks at Bed Supperclub on Thursday.
Good DJs know good tunes, but the best DJs know how to read the crowd. Equipped with this rare talent, Sasha (real name Alexander Coe) is famous for being also able to tap into that human experience and take it on a journey, all the while communicating with his music. Although his style is generally described as progressive trance with a large dash of acid house and break beat elements, his music has always reached beyond those record store titles, separating him from his contemporaries and establishing a strong fan base around the globe.
His original tracks and remixes have won over peer musicians and DJs from all genres. Many of them remain his faithful fans.
This kind of recognition does not happen overnight. Born and raised in a small town in Wales, Sasha was exposed to Motown records when he was just a boy and it was in the home that his talent for playing the piano was developed. His first exposure to house music was at Manchester’s Hacienda, where dance music had exploded into the summer of love. He quickly relocated to Manchester and explored the possibility of becoming a DJ. When a local pub announced that it was looking for people to play club dates, the rookie volunteered: he had just 30 records in his goodie bag.
Sasha’s first big break came when he was offered a residency at Shelley’s Laserdome, a top club in the UK’s Stokes-on-Trent. While all the other DJs were playing American house, the young DJ’s style was geared towards a more uplifting vibe with piano bits and Italian house thrown in the mix and acapella tracks over the top.
Shelley’s was the launch pad for his residency at electronic dance music club Renaissance in Mansfield, where Sasha created his niche and helped forge a new style in UK house music. At Renaissance, Sasha mixed the first ever UK DJ mix album and also met John Digweed, cementing the partnership known as Northern Exposure. Over the past couple of years, Sasha and Digweed have played together on five continents and mixed three successful Northern Exposure albums, which have sold more than a million copies worldwide.
This special brother-like relationship of the two also landed them the monthly residency at New York’s Twilo, following in the footsteps of Vasquez and Tenaglia.
Sasha has produced multiple UK-charting singles and has remixed tracks for artists such as Madonna, The Chemical Brothers and Hot Chip. His remix of Felix da Housecat’s “Watching Cars Go By” earned him a 2004 Grammy nomination.
After achieving success as a producer and DJ, Sasha worked with younger DJs and producers, among them BT and James Zabiela, influencing their musical styles and techniques. His use of live audio engineering equipment helped popularise technological innovations among DJs who formerly relied on records and turntables. Despite the changing trends in electronic dance music, Sasha continues to perform in large dance venues.
In 2007, he formed a record label with Renaissance Records called emFire, which is the exclusive outlet for his new music.
Sasha has been voted among the top ten DJs in the world by readers of DJ Mag every year since 1997, placing first in 2000. At the annual Winter Music Conference in 1999, Sasha won the Best Techno/Trance 12 award for “Xpander” EP and Best CD Compilation awards for “Global Underground: Ibiza”.
Hot night out
_ Sasha performs at Bed Supperclub on Sukhumvit Soi 11 on Thursday.
_ Pre-sale tickets costing Bt690 are available at www.Amiando.com/SashaIn
BKK.html.