Northern Exposure 2 (CD2)
- Progressive House
- Progressive Trance
CD1 of Northern Exposure 2 tells you the sequel has changed. CD2 stops pretending otherwise.
By this point the breaks, progressive house and trance are not separate colours being carefully introduced. They belong to the same palette. The mix is firmer than the first Northern Exposure, more obviously built around momentum, but it still refuses the cheap route of stacking one enormous breakdown after another.
That matters in 1997. Trance is getting bigger, rooms are getting bigger and the temptation to make every transition announce itself is sitting right there. Sasha & Digweed keep the long view.
The result is a useful bridge between the strange, spacious 1996 record and the tougher material that follows later in the decade. You can hear the scale increasing without the programming becoming stupid.
Taken on its own, CD2 is a strong late-90s progressive mix. Taken after CD1, it completes the argument: Northern Exposure 2 is not trying to recreate the first album's mystery. It is documenting what happened when that sound got more confident, more physical and considerably harder to separate from progressive trance.
Play both discs. The change across them is the point.
Recommended if you like: Follow it with Expeditions or the late-90s Global Underground discs to hear where the progressive/trance crossover went next.
For collectors
Renaissance: The Mix Collection
Three CDs that show how wide progressive house could be — warm house, strange turns, huge records and nearly four hours of Sasha & John Digweed programming that still makes sense as one complete mix.
See it on the Collector's Shelf →Northern Exposure
North drifts through ambient, breaks and psychedelic progressive music. South slowly pulls the club back into view. Hear them together and the complete journey makes far more sense.
See it on the Collector's Shelf →Global Underground 009: San Francisco
Hear a moodier Sasha than the Ibiza mix that followed — deep, psychedelic progressive house slowly opening into darker progressive trance across one patient journey.
See it on the Collector's Shelf →- Browse the full Collector's Shelf →