- Save for April's Out Of Time EP on Kompakt, Sasha has been quiet on the release front lately. Instead, he's been busy curating two dates at London's Barbican. His debut live show, re-Fracted, follows 2016's Scene Delete, an album on Late Night Tales in which he explored the boundaries of electronic music from a classical perspective. So, how would the king of progressive house fare in a concert hall?
Inspired by artists like Nils Frahm and Jon Hopkins, Sasha has been readying re-Fracted for two years, teaching himself music theory and taking 6 AM piano lessons via Skype from Australia. At the Barbican on Saturday, he performed live on piano and electronics, joined by guest vocalists, an orchestral percussionist and an eight-piece string section. Regular collaborators Charlie May, Dennis White and David Gardner played keys.
The Barbican was a fitting venue. A tiered space, the amphitheatre acoustics worked wonders for the bass, percussion and vibrato of the strings. The sound was good throughout, save for a flicker of speaker distortion. The hazy stage was awash with equipment—instruments far outnumbered musicians. Ghostly spotlights swayed gently, bathing the musicians in a golden glow. In the second half, which focused on older material, an orange hue reminiscent of an Ibizan sunset fell over the stage. As the tempo increased so did the spotlights, twisting out across the crowd of mostly jubilant '90s ravers on a rare big night out.
The music began with a chorus of whistles and a football-style roar of "Go on Sasha!" Then came a delicate build of ambient textures, with unhurried layering and a crescendo of harmonious strings that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Every drop was met with enormous cheers as Sasha made his way through extended and manipulated versions of "Detour," "Pontiac," "Warewolf" and others from Scene Delete. Not everything worked: some moments were too drawn-out and the vocalists didn't translate as well live as on record. At times, the vocals felt dated.
After the interval, the performance transitioned from the ambience of Scene Delete to the big room progressive sound that Sasha is renowned for. He looked visibly more relaxed as the trademark riffs and undulating synths of classics like "Wavy Gravy," "Who Killed Sparky?" and his remix of Lostep's "Burma" had the crowd on their feet immediately. But the real star of the show was the finale, "Xpander," Sasha's seminal track from 1999. A rousing orchestral rendition was every bit as spine-tingling as anticipated. The joy in the crowd was infectious.
Sasha seldom communicated with his audience. When he did, his quiet, rushed delivery made his nerves apparent. He needn't have worried: re-Fracted was an uplifting sonic exploration of his work that retained a focus on the optimistic melodies for which his DJ sets have long been celebrated.
Photo credit /
Lindsay Barchan