- It is not often I walk away from hearing a DJ play with such a feeling of incredulity and awe. I left the Greenwood Sounds on Sunday shaking my head in disbelief and still honestly cannot remember the last time that a DJ truly blew me away the way Sasha did on Sunday.
It is easy to contrast the last time that Sasha played in Sydney as there was a rather large amount of controversy surrounding ticket prices and location. I freely admit that I took a stand and refused to pay the $70 asking price, effectively cutting my nose off to spite my face. At least this time the ticket prices were reasonable and with that in mind I headed to the Greenwood to hear what Sasha had in store.
We managed to get to the Greenwood after a slight detour around 3.30pm and the place was already busy. I have to admit, I do love Sounds and there is something exceptionally naughty about misbehaving on a Sunday evening. There is always an amazing buzz around Sydney when an international plays and Sounds was no exception. You could see the excitement on peoples faces and feel the anticipation build as the day went on.
The first thing that struck me when I walked into the courtyard was the very loud sound. Usually the courtyard is a perfect place to warm up as you can sit down, have a few drinks and a chat with your mates. The new sound system meant that was impossible, but as it got darker and the beats got harder it was a blessing and the sound was truly top quality. An extra nice touch was the disco ball in the middle of the roundabout.
There was a good mix of people although it was quite obvious that a number of people were still going from the night before (and the night before that by all accounts!). You could spot the train spotters a mile off as they were warming up their chins in anticipation of some serious chin stroking. That aside the great thing about putting Sasha on a Sunday was that it attracted those that were genuinely interested in listening to some quality music.
The music before Sasha played had a harder edge than normal, which was fitting for the occasion and certainly got me looking forward to what was to come. Ben Korbel, Declan Lee and Robbie Lowe played sets that really set the scene and played perfect warm up music to the main event. There did seem to be some technical difficulties - Robbie''''s set was interrupted about half way through by a gust of wind making the record skip and also the sound during his set did seem to be a bit patchy.
I did intended on exploring the other areas but to be honest the music in the courtyard was so good that I couldn''''t move. I did walk through the chapel on a couple of occasions and it was very nice to hear decent music in there and to not be beaten around the head with glow sticks.
Sasha arrived a good hour before he was due to play. I don''''t know how I would have felt if I was Robbie Lowe playing with one of the worlds best DJs standing over my shoulder for that amount of time! Sasha was not accompanied by crates of vinyl nor a wallet of CDs but just appeared with a laptop slung over his shoulder. He spent the next hour on his laptop preparing for his set (although he could have been playing Space Invaders or chatting to the UK via MSN Messenger!). The clock struck 8pm and with a roar from the dance floor Sasha was live. From the very first track it was obvious that we were in for a treat and were going to be taken on a journey.
Perhaps the thing that I liked most about Sasha''''s set was that I could only name a couple of the tunes that he played. He took us through so many different spectrums and genres of music covering tech, electro, prog, house and breaks that it is impossible to singularly categorise the type of music that he played. Some of the tracks that we were treated to were “Aloud” Sex and Sun (Eric Prydz mix), "In my arms" Mylo, "Lick The Frog" Lee Coombs, "Drop the Pressure" Mylo and “Do what you want” Dennis Ferrer & Jerome Sydenham.
There has been much controversy over the fact that he played solely from his laptop (I understand the program that he used was Ableton Live v4). I agree that it is visually pleasing to watch a DJ lift a record and place it on the turntable but really how much time do you spend actually doing that? The whole laptop process was explained to me and the fact that Sasha has to spend so much time before his set pulling apart the music and mixing it live at the event is far more impressive to me than being able to beat mix. I appreciate that the chin stroking purists would consider it to be simply not on, but times are moving on and if a DJ can produce a unique set like that each time he plays out then does it really matter how it is generated?
I expected Sasha to be his usual sultry self and take the whole ‘head down bum up’ approach. Instead we were treated to Sasha’s dancing display (all be it limited) in the confined space that was the DJ booth. He really interacted with the crowd and spent a lot of the time jumping up and down with the music and punching the air.
He held the crowd for the full three hours and we were treated to three encores. I honestly wish he could have played longer. I could use all the superlatives in the world but I still don’t think I could come close to explaining the music played on Sunday night. I appreciate that I am probably gushing but it is so rare to be absolutely blown away by music like that. It will have to go down in my book as one of the best sets I have ever heard– it definitely shits over anything I have ever seen in Sydney. As for ticket prices – if Sasha comes to Sydney again I would be prepared to pay whatever the promoters charge!