Dance music has its impresarios, its legends and its time-tested ways. And now, it also has ‘Airdrawndagger’, the debut album by Sasha. Of course, Sasha’s been a celebrated fixture in the DJ world for more than ten years now, but with ‘Airdrawndagger’ he emerges as a formidable artist in his own right. In a sense, Sasha is waging a revolution from within. But with ‘Airdrawndagger’, Sasha simultaneously elevates and transforms the genre, bringing a gift for subtle moody ambience and richly textured sonic landscapes to legions of fans—both those who have experienced his creative abilities as a club jock, and for his scorching remixes of tracks like Madonna’s “Ray of Light” and “Out of Control” for the Chemical Bros. What makes Airdrawndagger different? For one thing, the personality that comes shining through the eleven tracks here is all Sasha. “If I’m ever to sell a lot of records, I want it to happen organically,” Sasha explains. “This record is the most solid foundation I could possibly have for the rest of my career. I’m not going to blatantly water down what I do. The main reason I didn’t want to have any star collaborators on my debut is I felt that big name collaborations just completely overpower your own sound. I need to establish that--so that my next record will sound like a Sasha record. When I add vocals, then it will sound like a Sasha record.” Airdrawndagger unfolds with a majestic certainty. Rather than serving up obvious paint-by-the-numbers acid house, Sasha begins the album with “Dremples,” a mini-opus of melodic, operatic motifs produced with more than a subtle nod to the cavernous echo-drenched stylings of Jamaican dub. Airdrawndagger reveals Sasha’s newfound confidence in the studio and his growing capacity to use technology as a musical instrument.

“From 1991 through 1996 I did tons of remixes,” Sasha says. “But it wasn’t fulfilling enough, so I just ditched the whole set up I had been working with. I felt trapped and I wasn’t getting the sound I wanted. So that’s when I decided I wanted to learn my way around the studio. It’s been a long arduous process. I didn’t have a music engineering or composing background, so I had to learn my way around the equipment on my own. It took me six or seven years to get up to speed, but it’s been worth it because now I really feel like I can hold my own.”

In “Mr. Tiddles”, breathy synths weave their way around gurgling analog keys while a kick drum taps out surprising patterns. Like the soundtrack to a visit to a planetarium, the music on “Cloud Cuckoo” evokes stars, depth, and night. When Sasha drops the beat, there’s an instant sense of movement, of someone running, threatening to overtake you, breathing down your neck. It’s cinematic music, expressing not only a mood, but a kind of narrative, one that’s no less evocative for being wordless.

“Immortal” is a funky, carefully woven tapestry of slurping synth lines, bleeps and beeps from crunchy analog synthesizers and a sifting techno beat, that adds up to an eerie, futuristic groove. “Fundamental” is the closest thing to an aggressive club-banger on the album, but it’s still more conceptually adventurous than a sci-fi flick. The song suggests that at 3:30AM, the night is just getting started.

Airdrawndagger is one of those rare albums that comprises a world unto itself. It’s also an album that will probably surprise a lot of people who might have assumed Sasha would serve up typical bass-heavy fodder for the clubs. “I don’t think people know what to expect,” he says, “they’re probably expecting some club tracks, but there’s only one song, ‘Bloodlock’, which I did with James Holden, an upcoming London producer, that’s a four to the floor type number.”

While Airdrawndagger is certainly not an ostentatious name-dropping affair, that doesn’t mean the creative process was a one-man show. The album was written and produced as a collaboration between Sasha and three critically important others: songwriter Charlie May, producer Tom Holkenborg, and sequencer/recording engineer Simon Wright. While May is an artist in his own right (he has worked with William Orbit and Caroline Lavelle in the past) and Holkenborg is well-known for his work as Junkie XL, Wright’s contributions—while equally essential—mark his professional debut. Originally hired via a temp agency to do a little filing in Sasha’s home office, Wright soon revealed that he had had some training as a recording engineer, and Sasha was pleasantly surprised to discover that the young college grad had a remarkable gift for creating choice sonic textures and tidbits. Eventually, Wright’s role in the creation of Airdrawndagger would become as vital in its way as that of May and Holkenborg.

Ironically, it was an injury that provided the window of opportunity Sasha needed to begin work on his full-length debut as an artist. “I began working with Charlie May in 1998, we’d done loads of demos together but we never got the focus together until May of last year when I perforated my ear drum in a car accident and I couldn’t fly or do anything for several weeks.” While convalescing, Sasha began writing songs, using only a piano and a laptop. “The whole experience of the car crash and smashing my face up meant I had to miss the Winter Music Conference and my phone didn’t ring for two weeks because everyone was down in Miami. So I just sat at the piano with a laptop for ten days while everyone was in Miami and got three songs done.” Soon Sasha was joined by May, with whom he collaborated on 1999’s Xpander, a four-track EP, which was in many ways the template for this Airdrawndagger. Together, Sasha and May completed the melodies, and with help from Simon Wright, they began to flesh out Airdrawndagger’s distinctive sound.

Tom Holkenborg from Junkie XL was the next link. The Amsterdam-based producer helped take the song ideas that Sasha and Charlie May had been sketching, and helped transform them into finished tracks. In July of 2001, Sasha moved to Amsterdam, and spent 5 months finishing off the album.

“Even though I have been building up to this album for five years, the truth is, five years ago I couldn’t even turn on a computer or program a synth, or understand the mixing process, so it’s been a slow learning curve. I had to learn my way around a studio and the whole technology of making a record, before I could make an album that would be true to me. I could have easily just gone into the studio with a producer and got a record out of it, but to make a record that was really truly mine I had to learn my trade.”

As one of the first British DJs to come to America and begin playing on the underground circuit in 1993, Sasha built up a solid foundation in San Francisco and New York. He participated in DJ tours at a time when DJ tours were rare. Early parties in Orlando drew 3,000 people from the get-go, because on the underground scene his remixes were already known. For the last dozen years, Sasha, along with partner John Digweed, have loomed large behind the wheels of steel, inducing audiences around the world into blessed-out trances and sweaty stupors.

Sasha was born Alexander Coe, and grew up in Hawarden, near Chester in the North of England. At 17, he passed the entrance exam to the elitist Epsom public school, but the young Northerner hated it and left before graduating, moving to North Wales to be with his father, where his stepmother forced him to take piano lessons. At the time, he hated the lessons. But after his first studio session--and this is typical Sasha--he phoned her to say thank you.

In nearby Manchester, the now legendary Hacienda was lighting the torch for acid house. One visit and the young pony-tailed Sasha was hooked. The smoke machine, the strobe lights, everyone trance dancing, wearing bandanas and smiley T-shirts. He smiles now, “It definitely had a fuck-you attitude compared to the rest of pop music.”

Sasha and his friends began driving up to the Hacienda every weekend. He moved into a friend’s apartment in South Manchester and got a job as a telemarketer. “I was always late for work, I was always in trouble, I’d always be half asleep until about 3 o’clock.”

Sales funded his nocturnal activities and a burgeoning collection of acid house tunes. One night the DJ who played in their local pub announced he was looking for DJs for a tour. Sasha stepped forward, and found himself making his debut in nearby Stockport. “I’d never even touched a Technics: I thought the pitch control was the volume, I didn’t even know where to plug my headphones in! I’m sure I was absolutely horrendous,” he grins now.

But he was good enough to be asked back, and work as a DJ steadily mounted. There were illegal warehouse raves and acid clubs and soon, Sasha began to attract a passionate and devoted following. In the early 90s, he became a staple on Florida’s thriving club scene, later crossing coasts to play San Francisco. For four and a half years, Sasha and John Digweed hosted monthly sessions at New York’s Twilo club, a residency that for many defined the state of the American dance music nation.

Sasha’s recording career started with dramatic remixes that reflected his hi-octane but still melodic DJ style. His first solo outing as BM:Ex in 1992 (it stood for Barry Manilow Experience) and Appolonia established the thoughtful mix of eerie vocals and dance floor thump that reaches its zenith with Airdrawndagger. Sasha’s rework of Madonna’s “Ray Of Light” turned William Orbit’s trance-pop production into a dance floor epic. His 1999 single “Xpander” remains a benchmark for progressive production, an anthem fellow producers strive to emulate, and clubbers live to hear him play just that one more time.

But with Airdrawndagger, Sasha once again set his sights higher, and demanded more of himself than even his fans had ever imagined. The reasons were personal. “Making a mix CD is a glorified DJ set,” he says, “which is obviously something I have completely ingrained in my psyche, but when doing remixes for people, the emotional investment you have in the music is slightly limited because you’re giving your own interpretation of someone else’s song. However, when you’re actually writing the songs yourself, there’s so much more of an emotional investment because you’re responsible for what the core of the song will be. You go through a lot deep emotional turmoil--the self-doubt, the self-criticism--and the process of finishing a song is much more intense than if you’re working on someone else’s record. It’s been a very interesting curve for me, learning how much more involved you are when you’re responsible for the music.”

“I just really felt like I had to make a piece of original music,” Sasha says of his goal in creating Airdrawndagger. In general, all the way through my career I felt that because I’m just a DJ playing other people’s records and remixing them, a part of me was missing as an artist. I almost felt like a bit of a fraud to call myself an artist. There was something not quite complete. But this record has completed me as an artist and it’s given me the solid foundation to say, this is my music and this is what I do. I always felt like the ice was a little thin underneath my feet. Now I feel like I have a really solid foundation beneath me. Doing mix CDs is great fun, but now I’m moving into the area of making an artist. Completing Airdrawndagger has given me a whole new dimension.”

“I made this album for the people who have come to see me over the last few years and I hope they’re gonna be happy with what I’ve done, rather than making a record just for the pure commercial value.”

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