Mixmag - SASHA: STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, page 1

SASHA: STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

It was a tough gig, perhaps the toughest of Sasha’s career. None of the crowd knew who he was. Why would they? After all, they were only four years old. The occasion: music week at Sasha’s son’s pre-school nursery. “The teacher of his class said ‘You’re involved in music, aren’t you?’” he recalls. “Before thinking, I said, ‘Yeah, I can DJ’. As soon as I said it I was like, fuck! What have I committed myself to?”

He spent the next three weeks worrying about what he was going to play before hitting on the idea of constructing a set from each child’s favourite song. There were kiddie songs like ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘I’m H.A.P.P.Y.’, ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by Black Eyed Peas, ‘Hotel California’, and, of course, ‘Yellow Submarine’. When the day came, the teacher told the kids to dance, but they were too embarrassed to start with, so he hooked them in with ‘The Goldfish Song’ by Luke Wallace (sample lyric: “I’m just a stupid goldfish / I swim round and round my bowl”). Sasha grins at the memory.

“I was like, this is so much like my normal Saturday night! You tease them in with the first couple of records and everyone’s a bit shy. Then you get that one record that pulls them in.”

By the time he finished, with ‘Yellow Submarine’, they were going bonkers. “I’ve not had a reaction like that to a last record for years,” he laughs. “At the very end, when they were all leaving the room, this one kid came back in and said, ‘How did you do that?’ I was thinking, ‘You’re going to be a DJ, mate’. It was the most fun I’ve had DJing in a very long time.”

There you have the reason why, 25 years since he started out, Sasha, real name Alexander Coe, is still a big deal. He has a gift for connecting with people via music, knows how use it to make you feel good, and gets off on it himself at the same time. He can do it in any situation, whether it’s Ushuaïa in Ibiza, the main stage at a festival, or, it turns out, a kindergarten in New York’s Chelsea district. It’s the golden formula for a DJ, and it never goes out of fashion. Which is why Sasha has never gone out of fashion either.
Tonight, he’s playing at La Mania in the Romanian seaside resort of Constanta, four hours of white-knuckle, 100mph plus driving from Bucharest. Like seaside towns the world over, Constanta looks a little bit sad, tacky and run down, but La Mania is, by all accounts, one of the best clubs in Europe. Coe is here to play the opening night of the 2012 season. A reformed hedonist, his occasional vices these days are red wine and a cigarette. He orders both, and starts to enthuse about the Romanian scene.

“The local DJs here have built a sound that they’re really passionate about, and that influences me more than anything in the UK or US. There’s an energy that’s really exciting.” He’s softly spoken and still has a gentle Northern accent despite having lived in New York for the last seven years. When he’s finished saying what he’s got to say he looks down and to the left while he waits for the next question. It’s not defensive – he likes a bit of banter, and a gruff laugh comes easily – it’s just a polite way of moving the conversation on.

It moves on quickly. He’s currently finishing off ‘Invol

Thank you for posting this article.  This was a very nice read.

Sasha is in my opinion the most gifted & technically the best DJ on the curcuit !!!!!    
Although saying that there will always be a place in my heart for Paul Oakenfold & all of the old residents from cream - Nick Warren  , Paul Bleasdale ETC ETC... Also as mentioned a lot of love for Maya Jane Coles ( A big fav of Andy P ) ....     Some other names that i think are on top form at the moment, Jamie Jones (as sasha mentions) also Luis Junior , Maceo Plex, Polefolder , Henry Saiz, Joris Voorn... I COULD GO ON.... Dub Step What ??????? What is this Stub Dep ?? Huh ?