Music
Looking back on the legacy of Sasha and John Digweed
It’s been 13 long years since the duo last played together in Australia. We sat down with them to chat through their incredible journey so far.
Chances are you’ve heard of the names Sasha and John Digweed. Separately they are still two of underground electronic music’s most loved and enduring DJs. But together they are a force of nature that has reached an almost mythical status.
It’s been 13 long years since the duo last played together in Australia. Ahead of their upcoming weekend residency in Sydney at the Ivy June 8-9, Red Bull Music enjoyed the rare opportunity of two lengthy conversations with Sasha and John, where they re-visited key touchstones of their back-to-back legacy: The early 90’s beginnings, the groundbreaking mix CDs, their legendary Twilo residency of the late 90s, their 2016 comeback, and finally sharing a few thoughts on the future.
1 min
Sasha and John Digweed return to Australia
Sasha and John Digweed chat through their incredible journey so far.
THE BEGINNING
John: I'd met Sasha on several occasions before we started playing together. I was promoting on the south coast of England; these big raves called Storm. I think this was 1991.
Sasha: John used to be known as ‘JD’ and he was a resident at Storm. He used to try and book me all the time, but this was back in the day when I only ever really played within an hour or two-hour drive of Manchester. At that time, the idea of driving all the way to the South Coast just felt like I might as well be going to Mars!
John: Back then no one was really travelling the length and breadth of England to do gigs. And he was doing Shelley's, which was obviously one of the biggest clubs in England. So I think dragging him away from there to come and play in a place he'd never been - even though we had nearly 2000 people every month going crazy - I can understand it was probably like, well, I'm just going down the road to play instead! It just didn't happen.
We played back to back and it just clicked immediately. Sheer chemistry from the very beginning.
Sasha: I was doing my residency at Renaissance in the first year [‘93] and John sent up a mixtape to Jeff who was running the club and we listened to it and it absolutely blew our minds. The mixing, the tracks he was using and the vibe very much fitted what I was doing, but it was also completely different. We obsessed over this tape and Jeff ended up booking him for Renaissance.
John: I sent a mix to Renaissance and got the call to come up and play at the club. We hit it off right from the get-go, but I didn't actually play with Sasha initially there.
Sasha and Digweed
© Harley Lunar
Sasha: The first gig we actually played together…he booked me to do his hometown party at Hastings Pier.
John: I said, "Look, you should really come down and play one of my small Bedrock parties. We won't even announce you on the flier, we'll just make it so it's very low key." No one was expecting him to be there. So I get on the mic and say, "And our special guest tonight, we've got Sasha!" And everyone just went mad and we just ended up playing back to back. That's kind of how it all happened really.
Sasha: We played back to back and it just clicked immediately. It was one of those strange moments, it was just effortless. Sheer chemistry from the very beginning.
John: From that moment we forged this legacy of a relationship. And at the time no one was really doing back-to-back sets. Now everyone seems to be doing them!
GENESIS OF THE MIX CD: RENAISSANCE MIX COLLECTION & NORTHERN EXPOSURE
Sasha: I think ‘Journey by DJs’ had already done a couple of releases. But I think Renaissance [The Mix Collection] was the first mix CD that had been done with multiple discs and really beautiful packaging and a whole marketing campaign behind it. It was treated like a major label release.
John: It really was one of those albums where people, before, had to just buy a dodgy cassette of a club recording. There was no really nice packaging, there was no information, it didn't feel like you were buying anything as a proper memento.
John: It was a reflection of the records that had been big at Renaissance. We had this pool of tracks that had been big at the club. And because no one else was doing compilation albums, those tracks had not featured on any other album. So we could cherry pick literally everything we wanted.
Sasha: The thing is, it sounds like a huge amount of work if you were to do it today. But, back then, you know, nobody had done mixed CDs like this, so we had this incredible resource of music that was completely untapped.
John: We tried to be as creative as possible. We had the Numark mixer that allowed you to do a little sampling and stuff like that, but it was incredibly hard. We weren't doing it through Pro Tools or anything like that. We tried to do as much as we could with the limitations that we had.
Sasha: We thought, let's just try it, let's see how it sounds. The way we paced it, it kind of felt like something no one had done before. It felt like the world was our oyster.
John: Clubbers could now start to hear what the possibilities were for DJs outside of a club. It's like, all right, you can transfer that experience onto a CD and still have it be as enjoyable as being in the club.
Sasha: Then with Northern Exposure we decided to make an album that was much more kind of home listening.
John: I think Northern Exposure was a knee-jerk reaction! Because after we did the Renaissance album the floodgates were open: there were so many albums that came out with a load of club tracks on it that we thought, we've got to change tack. We set such a high bar with the first album, so let’s do something completely different.
Sasha: The theory behind it was to again use music nobody else had used before.
John: We'd been playing in the States quite a lot, especially in Florida where that whole Rabbit in the Moon, breakbeat, atmospheric sound was really big. So we'd taken influences from those gigs and infused them into the CD.
Sasha: Tracks like Future Sound of London’s ‘Cascade’ and stuff from The Orb, all those beautiful tracks on there, no one had ever put tunes like that onto a release before.
John: It definitely wasn't what people were expecting. I remember DJ Mag gave us a 0/10! They thought we'd disappeared up our arses. But in actual fact, we were just trying to create something that was different. We could’ve put out club mixes all day long, but…yet again, we were cherry picking a load of tracks that hadn't been used before. Tracks we felt were unique, had atmosphere, had elements of the sound that we liked and played. We were really trying to push the concept of a mix album yet again, even further than we had with the first one.
Sasha: To make those kinds of records now is so difficult. You have got to try and find exclusive music, when everything has already been used. It will just never happen like that again…those same circumstances.
NEW YORK CITY AND THE MAGIC OF TWILO
John: Twilo still is the best club I've ever played in, because the sound system was unbelievable. You had this incredible, crystal clear sound that was really loud, but you could still have a conversation on the dance floor. So it didn't give you fatigue; you never came out of there with your ears ringing. It was just the purest, crystal clear sound you've ever heard.
Sasha: The first time we went up there we played a set that was probably way too musical. It became really apparent within the first couple of gigs what kind of music fitted that room and it was this kind of dark, pulsing, progressive techno.
Sasha
© Sasha
John: I think a lot of people probably didn't expect our Twilo residency to work as well as it did, because the New York club scene was really dominated by the New York DJs like Junior Vasquez and Danny Tenaglia. It was a very New York based sound, and I think Sasha and myself brought in a European sound, but with a New York influence. And I think that's what made us kind of stand out a little bit. It attracted a whole new audience that were kinda like, well we like this music, but we want something maybe a little bit tougher with a slightly different feel.
Sasha: The stuff that really worked in there was stripped back a bit with really long mixes and immediately the sound of the room became apparent; a darker sound that we were really into. The sound system almost dictated the sound to us!
John: Everyone began to get there earlier and earlier each week to make sure they got in. And also, there was a door policy. So if you didn't look like you were there for the right reasons, you didn't get it in. And it wasn't in a snobby way, its not that kind of, oh you're not dressed right…they just wanted to make sure they got the right people in.
Sasha: Word of mouth began to build. This is in the days before social media. It was the trickle effect. And that's what just gave it the momentum where it got better and better and built and built. That's why we had a five-year residency there, because it just kept getting better and better. More people found out about it and more people came.
Sasha and Digweed
© Harley Lunar
John: You'd have 4000 people in there going nuts, but they weren’t looking at us, and they weren't all on their phones, they were just on the dance floor. It was literally just based on great music, a great sound system, great lighting and New York. What can you say? At that time, it was the city that never sleeped. Now there's hardly a club in Manhattan. That's a sad reflection of where we are, almost 18 years after Twilo shut.
GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER
Sasha: When we decided to have a break there was no big fall out or anything, we just wanted to work on some solo stuff. I think John maybe took his sound a little harder, and I started doing these Never Say Never parties in Ibiza and playing quite a slow, almost Balearic sort of set, and I think we did go different musical ways for a little while. Then before we knew it, one year turned into five or six. I don't really know how it happened; we were so busy with our own stuff and nothing had been put in front of us that really made us think about doing it.
John: We bumped into each other in Japan in 2016 and had dinner, and I said, "What about doing some shows together?" I mean, I think there'd been a decent amount of time between. It just felt right.
Sasha: John invited me to play at his Bedrock party at Ministry Of Sound. But we decided if it was announced it would be road blocked and there would be too much pressure. John said, “Why don't you just sneak in the back door? We will black out the DJ booth and we can just start playing and see what happens.”
John: None of the club knew it was going to happen, not even the staff. I just said to the staff, "Look, I wanna try out this new mixer tonight. So can you do two setups ? I made them set it up exactly how Sasha likes it. I had this gauze in front of the DJ booth, so no one could see in the DJ booth at all. Then Sasha came down about 2am and started playing.
Sasha: It literally took about 45 minutes for the room to realise what has going on.
John: Someone from behind us tweeted a picture of Sasha and me in the booth and that obviously went around the dance floor.
Sasha: And then of course everyone started to go bonkers.
John: That element of surprise, of not announcing it, just like the first time we played together, made it a very special night. We could've probably ran it to the gills because it had been the first time we played together for six years. But that's not the key to making a special memory. What makes a special memory is getting something you weren't expecting.
ABSENCE MAKES AUSTRALIA GROW FONDER: THE 13-YEAR WAIT
John: The last time we were in Australia was 2006. Far too long ago, really. I think the last time we played in Sydney together it was at the Home nightclub?
Sasha: Ministry Of Sound came to us with the idea of doing a kind of residency; two shows in Sydney across a weekend, which was really interesting, especially as it is the time of year that we don't usually come out to Australia. We normally come down in the summer months. It was an interesting offer, and it was like okay, what can we do to make the two shows different?
John: We’ve never done anything like this before in Australia. So I think it was a nice option to not only give the people a night-time vibe on the Saturday night, but also something that’s maybe a bit more lighter musically on the Sunday.
Sasha: It’s really important to us that we have somebody that we know and trust setting the room up for us. So often you’ll be playing at a festival or a club you don't really know, and you can turn up and the music is all over the place and you really struggle for the first hour. So Robbie [Lowe] was the perfect choice to warm up the room for us.
Performing
© Harley Lunar
John: Every time I've been there and Robbie's opened up he's done an incredible job. I think when you've got someone like that who's a constant, you want to continue that. I want to know that when I go in there it's going to be at the perfect place to carry on from. And Robbie has always delivered on that front.
John: We’ve also been working on some special edits just for these shows. But that’s all I’m going to say. If I told you more...well it would spoil the surprise, wouldn't it?
STANDING THE TEST OF TIME
Sasha: We’re really trying not to milk it nor put too much pressure onto the situation. You know, John and I toured together, week in week out for 12 years and it is very hard, you know, that is longer than some bands last. So this time around we really are picking and choosing the shows, trying to make each one really special and hoping that that way, we will continue to enjoy doing it and get a buzz out of it and it will have longevity. I want to keep doing this for years to come.
John: I can't see there being another album project. I mean, it's not one of those things where I think we could change anything or come up with something new and unique. And to be honest, I'm just enjoying doing the gigs. I don't think putting out an album out is going to prove anything that we haven't already proved.
Sasha: There’s always this funny little competitive thing that goes on between us in the booth. It’s almost like we’re trying to outdo each other, but it’s a really gentle playmanship. It drives us forward.
John: Musically we were always slightly different. But combined together, there's something about it that brings out a bit of extra magic from both of us. That’s why our partnership has stood the test of time for so many years.