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| Average rating: 3.00 | Reviews: 1 |
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Fundacion Uno May 27, 2005
It was indeed a foundation upon which to build. Sasha brought his new digital road show to Avalon last Saturday night for the first installment of a six part monthly series. Billed as a residency but scheduled more as a temporary stay, the December 18 performance will be followed by five more through May that will complete the Fundacion story. It’s a story this Sasha fan is looking forward to hearing in its entirety.
Over the next six months, Sasha will shed the wheels of steel for a set-up that is slated to allow him to digitally improvise electronic music live. The showpiece of his gear, which was not present at the opening show, is a custom made interface to Ableton Live, a digital music production suite. The concept is hardly new. Underworld, Moby, Orbital, et al, have been producing electronic music live for years, and one of the newest masters of the art, Junkie XL, is to be at Avalon on New Year’s Day – not to be missed.
Every producer’s combination of “instruments” is custom, so again there is no ground being broken. The difference this time is that this is Sasha, the progressive golden boy, and it’s the first time he has ever attempted such a feat. Just as the hype for Airdrawndagger, his first collection of original creations, was unparalleled, so shall it be for Sasha’s first attempts at creating live music.
Episode 1 started off in typical Sasha fashion, with a slow mysterious build. However, unlike his usual live spin sessions, the attempt at creating music on the fly fell short of musical bliss. The Avalon crowd was into it, as usual, but it seemed to be more out of expectation of something great to come that never did. The majority of the set droned about unimaginatively and never came close to the Sasha fare I have grown to keep poised on the mp3 player at the expense of the many other live DJ sets in my collection. The dark prog lines, wicked breakbeats, and spacey trance grooves were few and far between, while a mostly chaotic mishmash of deep snyths over deeper 4/4 beats was pervasive.
Perhaps the new controller will bring the performance into shape when Sasha returns with Lee Burridge on January 29. However, this writer is doubtful, even while remaining a huge fan of what he has done to date. I equate it to the continuum from DJ to live improvisation. There are DJs, producers, live musicians, and live improv musicians, each requiring an increasing amount of ability to create music from nothing and with increasing pressure to do so accurately and in a timely manner. There is no questioning Sasha’s abilities to find and recognize great music and mix said music into a brilliantly epic montage, and those abilities have carried over into his promising, albeit short lived, production career. However, making the jump from one artist album that took years to produce to creating unique live music in the club is one for which not even Sasha may be ready. It’s quite a bold move and one for which he is to be commended, but Sasha has a long way to go to compete with the aforementioned pioneers if the recent pilot is any indication.
What has made Sasha such a great DJ is his innate, latent talent as a musician, but latent talent requires extraordinary practice to manifest itself in proven ability. I’m not sure that enough experience and practice has preceded Fundacion, but if the name is any indication it will be a foundation for refreshingly unique clubbing experiences in the future, and Avalon Hollywood will be a delightful proving ground.
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| Posted by official reviewer: matt |
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KOTTONMOUTH KINGS - THE GREEN ALBUM
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PENDULUM - IN SILICO
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JOHNNY CASH REMIXED
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BALANCE MIXED BY SOS
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