Classic Album: Sasha

BMG, 2002

After a car crash left him with a perforated eardrum, Sasha was warned off air travel, and grounded at home for a full three months. With his normal monthly schedule of 20 international DJ dates wiped from his calendar, thoughts turned to making music at home. Presented with such a block of downtime, he could finally fire up the one major project perpetually simmering on the back burner – his long-awaited artist album.

“I’d been talking about getting this record out for ten years,” says the superstar DJ. “Now I finally had the time.”

What began as tinkling on his piano, turned into hooks and ideas for tracks. Long-time writing partner Charlie May entered, fleshing out what was there. “We were living together,” says Sasha. “So working on music was easy. At the end of this three-month period we were like, ‘We’ve got a little body of work here that sounds like a record’.”

Eardrum all better, Sasha could travel. He hooked up with super producer, Junkie XL, and two became three, and they began working on the material at their new collaborator’s studio in Amsterdam.

“He had this kind of synth museum with all this old equipment,” says Sasha. “We just decamped down there and spent nine months making noises. Then Simon [Wright] joined the team. He led the way when it came to processing stuff. He had this cheap Ashly crossover, modded with printer parts. It gave everything a unique sound. That’s when it all came together.”

Although the resulting LP had no hits, no vocals, no radio singles, and next to nothing for the clubs, it was truly an artist album – sonically rich, emotionally deep, and a musical soundscape to lose, or find, yourself in.

“Yeah. The label and the publishers were a little disappointed,” says Sasha. “They were like, ‘Err. Where’s the single?’ And I was like, ‘I dunno. You tell me!’ [Laughs].

“I’m proud of the album, though, and that you’re talking about it nearly 20 years later. It’s got some legs, which is exactly what I wanted for it. It really was the record I wanted to make.”