DJ SASHA : Manchester 2 Coachella by: David Alexander

Alexander Coe aka DJ Sasha has had an evolving career that began with acid house in the late 80's and currently encompasses his experiences within house, breaks, progressive trance and all other fringes of eclectic flavors. Having remixed tracks for Madonna, The Chemical Brothers and co-produced with the likes of BT and James Zabiella, Sasha is a respected Grammy nominated Producer, DJ and label owner within the Electronic Music Scene. His ability to create memorable DJ sets keeps his dance floors packed and his steady stream of releases on emFire, a label created by Sasha in 2007, serves to evolve the global dance scene.

This year brings a new collaboration with John Digweed as the respected duo traverse the US in a 21-city romp, the first in 6 years, under the moniker "Sasha and John Digweed Spring Club Tour 2008".

How did you get involved with the DJ Lifestyle?

I was living in Manchester in the late 80's and raves and clubs right as the scene began to explode globally.

fell in love with the acid house movement. I started playing raves and clubs right as the scene began to explode globally. I guess I was at the right place at the right time. I've always liked melodies and I've always tried to mix in key so when producers started blending harder progressive sounds with vocals and melodies I knew I had found my niche.

What instruments do you play?

I don't really play other instruments but I can get around the piano and keyboards. At the moment I'm working with Charlie May and Duncan Forbes, AKA Spooky and Barry Jamieson who has been a long time collaborator and co-producer. I do some programming with Ableton Live and conceive the direction of the projects and we all make it happen together.

Give us an insight on your studio setup.

My Studio is currently set up in New York. We use Ableton rewired into Logic and get the best out of each program as well as use a lot of the Arturia Software synthesizers like the new Jupiter Emulation Plug-in, which is fantastic. We use Reaktor, which we love, and we also rely heavily on the new Access Virus Polar Synthesizer that covers a large range of textures and sounds and can be heard on almost everything we produce. Older synths are also used like the Arp, Jupiter 6 and Jupiter 8.. we love those old synths. I start a lot of grooves by using Ableton to rework samples and sound clips from different sources, and other peoples records, much the same way I used to sample with the MPC 3000. Now it's much easier to do the same in the computer. Lately we've been spending most of our money on analog outboard gear such as vintage compressors and EQ's, tons of Guitar Pedals daisy chained together to remove that spiky digital sound and create warmer textures. We have a new Amek Mic pre and a Universal Audio 1176 compressor that we run everything thru. The Neve 6176 channel strip is also great. Things seem to come together

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