Sasha does tell

There are few DJs knocking about today that inspire slavish devotion and unhealthy obsessions amongst (always male and generally single) fans like Sasha. ‘The Man Like...’ as he was called back in the day is now best known as the good-looking half of that strange DJ hybrid Sashaanddigweed – masters of the ‘serious’ world of progressive house. During our brief telephone chat – he’s in Ibiza, mate – hotpress decides to offer the quite possibly incendiary theory that prog house has, in fact, become the new trance to liven things up a touch. We had assumed that this would be like waving a particularly red flag in front of a particularly mad bull – ‘cos prog house is so serious, y’see – but the amiable Sasha agrees.

“It’s funny you should say that because in a way it is. But the thing is, for a lot of the bigger gigs you do, you just can’t get away with a lot of the deeper progressive stuff in the big rooms – you have to play some of the more trancy stuff to get away with it. I’m not saying I play music I don’t like – I don’t – but you just can’t get away with the more interesting stuff all the time.”

Trance lives on with credible DJ shocker! Now that we’ve got that world-exclusive out of the way, let’s fill you in on the more mundane details. Sasha – or Alexander Coe as it says on his passport (British) – first came to prominence in the early ’90s thanks to his deft mixing and blend of happy Italian piano house choons in various clubs across the North of England. He rapidly became clubland’s chosen one thanks to his good looks, all-too-rare productions and remixes (including that particularly memorable remix of M People’s ‘How Can I Love You More?’) and his habit of not turning up at his gigs. The old ‘will he/won’t he?’ gets ‘em every time.

And, almost ten years on, Sasha’s still top of the DJ tree. A perforated eardrum meant he had to take most of the start of this year off and had to quit his Tyrant residency at London’s hip and happening Fabric nightclub. So the big question amongst the more slavish fans is where he’ll set up shop next. Well?

“We’re looking to do something in New York, actually,” he reveals unexpectedly. “Towards the end of the year, at a new venue.” A venue which, despite enquiring three times, has such an odd name I couldn’t transcribe it. It begins with a ‘c’. Asked whether it’s with the same people that ran Twilo – the recently closed NYC club that broke Sasha and Diggers in the US – he sketchily reveals that it’s “not” the same: “It’s a new team of people in a new venue.”

He’s also got plans to resurrect the successful Tyrant residency. “It’s something that sort of got put on the back burner, what with all the problems with my ear and other commitments throughout the year,” he says.

“It’s something I really enjoy, doing it with (fellow residents) Craig Richards and Lee Burridge, getting to play different stuff.” He’s also quite enamored with the venue, Fabric – a vast underground cellar of a club with a dedicated clientele: “There’s a certain flow to the night there. In most clubs you have to start bringing people up and up throughout the night, but there it’s different. You can get away with playing trippier stuff at around 5am and the people really go for it.”

One thing he’s not willing to talk about is his long-awaited new album – now running about, oooh, three years overdue. He won’t reveal anything apart from a guarded acknowledgement that, yes, he’s working on it and it’s going fine. What he will reveal is that he’s got another mix CD on the way – not, as many had hoped, a new installment in the hugely popular 'Global Underground' mix CD series – but an even bigger fish, a “new mix CD with myself and John (Digweed) before the end of the year.” Again, that’s all he’s saying, but it will, of course, have the fans foaming.