Get ready for more Sasha threads

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 1:29 am

supster wrote: (electronic music would be shite in the US without Sasha and Digweed coming here in the mid 90s. Or rather, it defitely would not be the same ... )

N E W S F L A S H !!!

Electronic music is SHITE in the US. I live in the US and play more gigs outside of the states than in the states... not because i choose to, because of the demand.

so yea, if you thought electronic music was doing well at all in the US, wipe the muck from your spectacles. I think alot of that happened (no)thanks to some big name DJs, but fortunately the US has rejected assimilating electronic music into absolute shite like it did by commercializing Hip Hop and "alternative" rock.

just look at how Oakenfold got regurgitated in the American press, you won't find a clip about him in XLR8R that doesn't include the word "wanker", and rightfully so.

DEMF does well because its free, but DEMF has also crapped it up the last year or two. I didnt know detroit was capable of attracting so many white candy ravers.

The Rave Act was a way for the american machine that gobbles up art and spits out shit of saying "Conform or Die". and we said fuck the machine. So yea, it means the culture has dwindled... the scene is smaller than its been in 10 or 15 years... but if that means Oakenfold gets more eggs thrown at him than roses when he comes here... i'd rather take playing at a basement in St. Louis for 200 "heads" than dealing with those kinds of egos in order to get 3,000 people in the club.

The US scene is cleansing itself of the CRAP that ruined it in the first place.

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 1:42 am

Damn I am objective all the way, never heard of this Sasha so finally, after seeing it all over the place decided to check it out. I am not biased by his face, I am not teenaged girl, neither gay. Anyway seen the website, downloaded 3 items and had a listen. I said items because it hardly could be called music. Stereotype chasing stereotype., predictable, boring, smothly done, bland, characterless... just nothing. So I do not understand the controversy. Put a monkey in front of groovebox and you will definitely hear something more interesting. These items were not even bad, just lifeless nothing. I thought this is some Jesus Christ , avatar of the era of DJ gurus but... soap bubble.
Seriously anybody of you could and probably does better. People must take some heavy drugs to be able to be moved to dance to "these". Maybe I heard 3 worst things he ever done, but honestly I am not motivated to hear anything more from this individual.
I will definitely use his "creations" on the music production workshops, they are good negative example, what and how thing should not be done.
Sasha fans forgive me, and you Shasha if yoou read it, do not forgive me, neither yourself. Take a course in music, learn to play kazoo, recorder or maybe gardening, music is perhaps not the best hobby for you, and earning money with what you do, does not make you professional musician, just ...maybe... `musical pimp ?

special ed · Post by **special ed** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 2:00 am

Sure. Remember:

- Most producers would not be shite without superstar dj's to play thier tracks. Truly. Your stuff would not be heard on any kind of wide enough basis to make any difference without them

- Most superstar dj's are also producers, and partly became famous because of thier studio work. Rarely ever for just playing live.

- Just because someone is famous, doesnt mean you should slag them or hate on them. They might or might not be freeloaders, users, talented in the studio or not, assholes or not, ... whatever.

Hating on them and sarcastically cutting on someone just because they are in the spotlight makes you sound jealous Really. Or just jumping on a bandwagon because its not cool to like someones art because they have popularity.

A little objectivity is a good thing ..

its not that im hating on him, its the fact that the superstar dj thing is everything wrong with electronic music today. your argument is that the producer needs the dj to play their tracks, mine is that the dj needs the producer. i would possibly be able to be more objective in the matter if the producer got their due respect in all of this. sasha's thing seems more about hype. to put a face on a whole culture. thats not right. thats exploiting the purpose the music had in the first place. it appeases the corporate part of things. the djs i have more respect for are the guys like danny teneglia and franky knuckles. i also respect bt's musicianship. about the only good thing about sasha i guess is the fact that hopefully his endorsement of live will bring more respect to the laptop performers. none of this has anything to do with whether i like his music or not, as i dont mind the music so much, not that im going out to buy any of it though. i just think hes overrated. but i guess hes not nearly as bad as oakenfold. the superstar dj thing is just an excuse for people that dont sing, or play an instrument to be popstars. put everything in its right place and give the producers what they deserve as well. sasha is just the middleman in all of it so to speak, between the producer and the listener.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 3:56 am

Burp!

supster · Post by **supster** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 4:22 am

AdamJay wrote:
supster wrote: (electronic music would be shite in the US without Sasha and Digweed coming here in the mid 90s. Or rather, it defitely would not be the same ... )
N E W S F L A S H !!!

Electronic music is SHITE in the US. I live in the US and play more gigs outside of the states than in the states... not because i choose to, because of the demand.

so yea, if you thought electronic music was doing well at all in the US, wipe the muck from your spectacles. I think alot of that happened (no)thanks to some big name DJs, but fortunately the US has rejected assimilating electronic music into absolute shite like it did by commercializing Hip Hop and "alternative" rock.

just look at how Oakenfold got regurgitated in the American press, you won't find a clip about him in XLR8R that doesn't include the word "wanker", and rightfully so.

I do agree with a lot of what you're saying here. No, quality edm is not doing so great in the US on a commercial scale, but that has more to do with other factors that what celebrity DJ's are or are not doing.

For one ... people in the US need to hear a 'song' with lyrics and an easily digestable structure in order for it to be commerical. Everything instrumental is a niche market. So, the nature of the music makes it marginalized (if you want to call it that) to TV ads and movie soundtracks and trailers.

Also, if you are implying that edm in other parts of the world (take europe) is doing so much better commerically than here, you are right. But, yanno ... look who was just voted worlds #1 DJ in DJ magazine. Tiesto. And who voted him in? Europeans

The big sellers are hard cheezy trance and hard house. Thier version of crap.

So its the same. They are just making a lot more money over there and becoming bigger celebrities on thier crap.

If you want your style of stuff to do better (sell more, get more fans) - sad to say - the more esoteric it is or the more "underground" it is, the more likely it is to stay that way. Unfortunatly that includes a lot of stuff that we know is awesome, but will never appeal to the masses no matter who plays it or pushes it.

And please dont compare Oakenfold with Sasha.

Paul has blatantly whored himself .. or at least tried to ... and has completely lost touch with whatever he started out doing. At least Sasha has gone with his instincts and at least tried to produce quality music.

If you dont like it ... again, matter of opinion ...

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 4:50 am

i don't want my "style" to sell more,
i'd just prefer the crap sells less

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 6:53 am

rikhyray wrote:Damn I am objective all the way, never heard of this Sasha so finally, after seeing it all over the place decided to check it out. I am not biased by his face, I am not teenaged girl, neither gay. Anyway seen the website, downloaded 3 items and had a listen. I said items because it hardly could be called music. Stereotype chasing stereotype., predictable, boring, smothly done, bland, characterless... just nothing. So I do not understand the controversy. Put a monkey in front of groovebox and you will definitely hear something more interesting. These items were not even bad, just lifeless nothing. I thought this is some Jesus Christ , avatar of the era of DJ gurus but... soap bubble.
Seriously anybody of you could and probably does better. People must take some heavy drugs to be able to be moved to dance to "these". Maybe I heard 3 worst things he ever done, but honestly I am not motivated to hear anything more from this individual.
I will definitely use his "creations" on the music production workshops, they are good negative example, what and how thing should not be done.
Sasha fans forgive me, and you Shasha if yoou read it, do not forgive me, neither yourself. Take a course in music, learn to play kazoo, recorder or maybe gardening, music is perhaps not the best hobby for you, and earning money with what you do, does not make you professional musician, just ...maybe... `musical pimp ?

ROFLMAO @ then giggles some more -

Rikhyray you have a way with words.
Musical Pimp is probably being a bit kind but what the heck he's more like the Pox ridden Hooker on the Dj Decks IMHO

.
Man give me Matmos ,Monolake ,Arovane , Richard H.Kirk ,MuM ,Tortoise ,Flanger etc etc etc anyday of the week over this diabetic inducing candy floss .

PS: I DONT WANT - DJ features in Live either BTW

.
Then again that's another thread altogether.

supster · Post by **supster** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 10:02 am

As an aside ... another thing I cant help noticing:

Some of you guys are either really, really old (as in, well outside the dance culture generation) ...

... or I have a feeling you are into extreme esoteric forms of techno, more akin to crickets chirping than anything else

Why do I have this feeling?.. LOL

(all kidding aside ... I also know there are a lot of talented and accomplished people, and dam fine musicians on this board as well. Some of you might be one and the same

)

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 12:00 pm

supster wrote:As an aside ... another thing I cant help noticing:

Some of you guys are either really, really old (as in, well outside the dance culture generation) ...

... or I have a feeling you are into extreme esoteric forms of techno, more akin to crickets chirping than anything else

Why do I have this feeling?.. LOL

(all kidding aside ... I also know there are a lot of talented and accomplished people, and dam fine musicians on this board as well. Some of you might be one and the same )

No we're LATE 30's which means U know we remember cool stuff like early Front 242 , Cabaret Voltaire , 80's electro , PIL , Afrika Bambatta , Aux 88 ,British Electric Foundation ,Ska , Dub , Reggae old skool friggin CREDIBLE Hip Hop , early Detroit techno acetates etc etc etc and
early Underground Resitance and FFRR/WaxTrax releases.
The whole ACID house explosion yeah you bet it was a fuggin' blast and the focus wasn't on some hype merchant DJ it was on THE MUSIC believe it or not.
So much of it isn't "ground breaking anymore" - I don't however say all of it is utter shite. Alot of it is though.
Maybe the vibes just as fresh for you young whiper snappers ???
But there was nuttin' like droping your first microdot (yeah I was young and foolish once

) and freakin' out to Stakkers Humanoid the first time I heard it.
Or early 808 State , baby ford , A guy called Gerald ,D-Mob yada yada yada I sound like a broken record hehehehehehehe.
Those where the days.
Never really understood the whole Ecstacy thing though myself

never ever appealed to me . It all went to shite with E IMHO.
The music was just as great straight as it was if you where bit twisted back in the day nowadays I just find it mind numbingly unlistenable

.

stallos · Post by **stallos** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 12:30 pm

Lots of people spittin venom over sasha but lets put things into perspective. Disliking his style of music is one thing but slating a guy for being popular is just what Americans might call "player hating". What have you done for dance music that can even compare to what he has ? You make a few mixes on your laptops and think you have right to dis a guy whose spent the last ten years touring the globe pushing the sound in new directions - Do me a favour !!
The man has consistently pushed the boundaries and set the standard.

I saw sasha in glasgow for the first time in 1995 and I queued around the block for about 2 hours to get in. I went to seee him again earlier this year and queued again. Thats 9 years and he still has masses of support. Why do you think that is? Because its a fad, fashionable popular thing? Bollocks! its down to the music, the people in that club were not teenyboppers following a trend - they were serious music lovers with a passion for progressive house. Everyone I spoke to that night was really clued up about music.

OK, theres lots of other DJs out there using live and have been for ages. No-one as high profile though which is why we are getting all this press attention. I'm sure sasha would be the first to admit that hes not the Live master by any stretch of the imagination but making the switch to laptop is a big move for him (as it is for others) The problem he has is that people expect him to be a certain way, eg fans, club owners, record labels, press etc - that amounts to a lot of pressure.

Its easy for us to sit here and criticise and have the attitude that "when I make it big as a DJ I'll never sell out." If we were in that same situation it might be a different story when they are waving all that cash under your nose. maybe not. The point is theres lots of pressure to sell out.

Regardless of what you think of sasha's style of music, the man has done a lot for the scene as a whole and has managed to the best of his ability not to sell out in the way that so many other big names have.

Dont get me wrong, I dont like the idea of superstar DJs as much as the next guy. I think its the producers who should be taking the credit for making you move in the club. To a ceratin extent they are though, because when I hear something wicked in a club I go out and buy the vinyl, not a dj mix compilation. I think producers need DJs too, to get their music to the masses. Its a 2 way relationship but I think thats changing now in the digital age as the boundaries between producing and djing are blurring. I am going to see James Holden this week do a part dj/part live performance.

At the end of the day, I'm sure Ableton are really pleased with all this press. The more users that have live, the more money Ableton has to make the product better. I guess some people dont want the software to be popular because they are worried that other people will become better than them and they lose their power. Its old thing of disliking things because they are popular.

All I'm saying is that Sasha gives Ableton a lot of exposure because of his popularity. All the garbage about "groundbreaking, innovation" etc is just marketing hype to sell magazines, controllers etc not his actual opinion of himself. The guy clearly has a love for music and has made some good tracks - have a listen to Xpander sometime.....

The problem is you always get followers. You get people who like something and then that something becomes trendy so it becomes popular to like that something. It just means that a lot of people cant think for themselves, thats not the artists fault though is it? OK so this means we will have a load of new posts on the board saying how do I DJ like sasha etc? At the end of the day the next fad will come along and these people will move on leaving us lot behind, so lets not jump ship just because these dudes come onboard.

We have a lot of music snobbery on our planet. We have this view that if we like something before its popular then that makes us cool or when something becomes popular its not cool to like it. It would all be simpler if we all just went with how the music made us feel but its so wound up in our cultural values and our self identity that it rarely works like that.

Instead of slagging DJs who have paved the way for us, lets raise the profile of the guys you feel deserve recognition for real groundbreaking work.

Sorry for the huge post!

laters

supster · Post by **supster** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 2:08 pm

FaX-01 wrote:
supster wrote: No we're LATE 30's which means U know we remember cool stuff like early Front 242 , Cabaret Voltaire , 80's electro , PIL , Afrika Bambatta , Aux 88 ,British Electric Foundation ,Ska , Dub , Reggae old skool friggin CREDIBLE Hip Hop , early Detroit techno acetates etc etc etc and
early Underground Resitance and FFRR/WaxTrax releases.
The whole ACID house explosion yeah you bet it was a fuggin' blast and the focus wasn't on some hype merchant DJ it was on THE MUSIC believe it or not.
So much of it isn't "ground breaking anymore" - I don't however say all of it is utter shite. Alot of it is though.
Maybe the vibes just as fresh for you young whiper snappers ???
But there was nuttin' like droping your first microdot (yeah I was young and foolish once ) and freakin' out to Stakkers Humanoid the first time I heard it.
Or early 808 State , baby ford , A guy called Gerald ,D-Mob yada yada yada I sound like a broken record hehehehehehehe.
Those where the days.
Never really understood the whole Ecstacy thing though myself never ever appealed to me . It all went to shite with E IMHO.
The music was just as great straight as it was if you where bit twisted back in the day nowadays I just find it mind numbingly unlistenable .

You know, I keep coming back to this thread because I think its so interesting ... its not really about one guy (Sasha) so much as it is about the state of electronic music as a whole ...

Truthfully, we're not all *that* far apart in age

I remember a lot of the same music. So does Sasha

lol ...

But my perception of what is going on is totally different from yours.

Honestely man - I can tell by your posts - and some of the others in these threads, that you really (truly) have not heard a lot of what is out there now. Have not *really* listened to it.

Because, if you appreciate 808 State, or Front 42, or 80's electro ( the non-dorky variety), or PIL, or Jarre, or Vangellis, or ... etc etc etc ..

*And* you had the chance to hear a variety of modern dance tracks - and listen objectively - you would probably really dig it. Yes a lot of it sounds the same. Yes there is a lot of trash.

Partly because technology - like LIve - has advanced to the point where anyone can build a home studio with 100x more potential than anything Caberet Voltaire or even Vangellis himself had access to. Any KID can have it in thier bedroom. Doesnt make you an artist ...

Part of the art of DJing is finding the quality tracks and mixing them. Which is what our whole scene is based around. MIXING music in a seamless whole that moves you in new ways.

Part the difference between a GOOD DJ and a BAD DJ is that they supposedly should have access to quality and know the difference.
The producers understand that. The DJ's do. Often they are one and
the same.

Everyone accepts it. This scene is built on these ideas ..

If you have musical sense, I challenge you to listen to Airdrawndagger or Involver (his last 2 artist releases) ... all the way thru ... more than once

... and honestly tell me that they are utter complete, unoriginal, worthless crap. It might not be exactly your sound, might not be to your taste ... but what he has been doing is at least an admirable attempt at quality art.

Like the last gentleman stated - dont hate the player just because.

imo electronic music of the past couple of years is better than it ever has been. YES theres more crap. But if you know where to look, there is also WAY more diverse, creative, great stuff being done than there ever has been in history.

You just have to go out and find it, and keep your ears open.

FaX-01 · Post by **FaX-01** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 3:03 pm

I did say however that 'not all of it was utter shite' ........

I love the following as an example
LFO
Two Lone Swordsmen
Moloko
Goldfrapp
William orbit
Everything But The Girl
Basement Jaxx
OutKast
Infected Mushroom
Spongle
BiFtek
Voitek
Honeysmack
Antideluvian RockingHorse
Sobriquet
Arovane
Monolake
David Holmes
Chris Vrenna
Lamb
Tortoise
MuM
Underworld
Orbital - Blue CD (really love transient and Acid Pants)
etc etc
There's been some great "back to mine" collections as of late also
Just some of it is truly horrid.
Alot of MicroHouse and techHouse acts I really dig also

nuperspective · Post by **nuperspective** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 7:43 pm

in general i agree with supster. i think its a case of not hating the player - its hating the game. the whole superstar cliche.. sorry superstar dj thing is on the way out. it been done. the damage has been done. i think this is a realisation that all these dj's are aware of.

music is forever, will always be. the same for performing music. so i think that the blurring of these performance lines - making the whole clubbing, dancing, musical thing a unique experience is the way to go. this has been started by the likes of richie hawtin, futureshock and king unique doing the deck and fx thing. awesome to listen to, awesome to see.

all the dj does is give a visual connection for the crowd in the same sense a band does. ok the freshness of the music has slowed down and thats to be expected, but theres some great unique stuff out there - james holden being one.

if rock music can still be original so can electronic music. no one had heard anything like elvis at the time, but rock still moves forward. it a difficult time for electronic music as a popular musical form. follow the rock timeline and the ebb and flow it went through to the present day.

going to see a band is a unique experience, soon clubbing will be the same. no more djs playing the same sets week in week out. i for one think is a good thing.

at the end of the day were not stupid for ten years the music press and our own misconceptions have built these people into something their not. this awakening comes from everybody knows someone with some 1210's and they can all mix really, really well. so whats so special about that?? nothing - the numbers up. busted.

i think we are on the verge of a change with only australia, china and some tribes in the amazon to grind into submission and boredom we may soon be on the up.

keep positive

the ar · Post by **the ar** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 7:47 pm

He's not revolutioning a fuck all... Live is, not that prick...
I hate it when things like this happen.
'So you are using Sasha's program' bla bla
Fuck him and the media that write bullshit.

D K · Post by **D K** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 4:33 pm

(electronic music would be shite in the US without Sasha and Digweed coming here in the mid 90s. Or rather, it defitely would not be the same ... )[/quote]