Sasha — Global Underground 013: Ibiza

Release details

• ArtistSasha
• Year1999
• LabelBoxed / Global Underground
• Format2 × CD
• SeriesGlobal Underground

Sasha goes widescreen without losing control

GU013 goes bigger without losing control. GU009: San Francisco makes you work for it. It’s darker, moodier and a little strange around the edges.

GU013: Ibiza is something else. The scale is bigger almost immediately. The melodies are brighter. The second disc in particular feels like Sasha has decided he’s got an entire island, two CDs and absolutely no reason to hold back.

And somehow, despite having Xpander, Mercury & Solace and Heaven Scent sitting on the same disc, it still feels like a proper Sasha mix rather than a compilation of late-90s progressive anthems.

That’s the important bit. Because this tracklist could’ve been ridiculous. In the wrong hands it probably would’ve been.

The original UK release appeared in 1999 as a 22-track double CD. Nobody remembers GU013 because it has 22 tracks. They remember what happens when those 22 tracks are put in that order.

CD1 starts far deeper than the Ibiza name suggests

Call an album Sasha — Ibiza in 1999 and you could forgive somebody for expecting it to open with something enormous. It doesn’t.

Raff ’n’ Freddy — Deep Progress gets more than eight minutes. And the title is almost too perfect. Deep. Progressive. Patient. Exactly where Sasha starts.

It rolls rather than announces itself. There’s movement underneath it, but nothing is begging for attention.

MRE — The Deep Edge pushes the atmosphere somewhere slightly different and creates room for Resistance D — Feel High, remixed by Humate. That Humate mix is where the sound begins opening out.

This is still progressive house before it’s trance

GU013 often gets remembered through CD2. Understandably. But if you skip straight to Xpander, you’re missing half of why that second disc feels so massive.

The first CD is disciplined. Dominica — Real Time and Medway — The Baseline Track keep things grounded. Medway especially has that late-90s progressive quality where a bassline can do more work than some enormous breakdown.

The obvious records are coming. Everyone knows they’re coming. Sasha doesn’t rush towards them. He makes you wait.

My Lexicon still sounds ridiculously good

Sander Kleinenberg — My Lexicon is one of those records. That groove. Those little sounds around the edges. The sense that the track is constantly moving without ever becoming frantic.

It feels completely at home here. And this is where CD1 begins to widen. Not with a giant emotional moment. With detail.

The Breeder remix of Nothing Left is bloody enormous

Orbital — Nothing Left (Breeder Remix) gets room to breathe. Breeder drag the original into exactly the sort of progressive world Sasha could use properly.

The scale jumps. The low end feels heavier. There’s more drama. But because the first half of the disc has been so controlled, it doesn’t feel overblown.

Stage One still sounds like a proper Sasha record even though it isn’t Sasha

Space Manoeuvres — Stage One, in the Pariah remix. Huge tune.

But it doesn’t arrive like: HERE IS THE CLASSIC. It feels like the logical consequence of everything that’s already happened.

That’s what good DJing does to a famous record. It removes the quotation marks.

CD2 goes for it — because CD1 earned it

Look at the run: BT. Cass & Slide. Sasha. BT again. Junkie XL. Bedrock. That’s absurd.

But it doesn’t feel like somebody made a playlist called Progressive Trance Classics 1999. That’s the achievement.

Fibonacci Sequence is a ridiculous way to open a disc

BT — Fibonacci Sequence, in The Light remix, gets more than ten minutes. At the very start of CD2.

That tells you Sasha isn’t interested in warming you up again. He knows CD1 already did the work.

The track just opens out. Big. Detailed. Almost cinematic. But not sentimental. It’s pure late-90s progressive trance when producers could spend ten minutes developing one idea and nobody thought that was unreasonable.

Perception is nine and a half minutes of why this era was so good

Cass & Slide — Perception is one of those tracks. Beautiful. Deep. Emotional. But still built like a proper progressive record rather than a sentimental interlude.

It never feels excessive because there’s movement inside it. The track keeps unfolding. Nothing is in a hurry.

Xpander doesn’t feel like self-promotion. It feels inevitable.

Putting your own nine-and-a-half-minute track right in the middle of your Global Underground mix could have felt incredibly self-important. It doesn’t.

Because the set has built the exact world Xpander belongs in.

Those synth lines. The movement. That sense of space. Everything around it makes the record feel less like Sasha playing Sasha and more like: of course this is here.

Xpander still sounds like the future imagined from 1999. It doesn’t sound modern. That’s not the same thing. It sounds like what the future was supposed to sound like at the end of the 90s.

Mercury & Solace is almost unfair

BT again. This time with Jan Johnston.

Mercury & Solace is the sort of record that could make a mediocre mix feel emotional just by turning up. GU013 doesn’t need rescuing, so the record gets to become part of the album’s final emotional stretch.

That vocal. Those huge synths. Late-90s trance excess? Definitely. But at its best.

Heaven Scent is an outrageous closer

Bedrock — Heaven Scent. You could argue this is the most obvious possible way to finish a 1999 progressive mix. I don’t care. It works.

You’ve had more than two hours of Sasha building towards this kind of scale. The track hasn’t been dropped into an empty set hoping its reputation will do the work.

After Fibonacci Sequence, Perception, Xpander, Mercury & Solace and Junkie XL, Heaven Scent feels less like one more anthem and more like the last wall finally coming down.

Sometimes the obvious record is obvious because it’s bloody good.

The full tracklist looks almost too good.

That’s the danger. You can look at CD2 and reduce GU013 to the famous names. BT. Sasha. Bedrock. Cass & Slide.

That’s not why it works. The less obvious records matter just as much. Zoe keeps Fibonacci Sequence from swallowing the disc. The Fly creates space for Xpander. Bluefish — One resets the emotional temperature before BT arrives again.

That’s DJing. The famous records are the peaks. The mix is everything holding them up.

GU013 captures progressive trance right at the point it got enormous

Late 1999 was right in the middle of the global trance boom. Sasha, Ibiza and some of the era’s biggest progressive-trance records all converge here.

But I wouldn’t describe the whole album as simple trance. CD1 is too deep for that. The journey matters.

GU013 starts in progressive house and gradually lets the trance side expand until CD2 can get away with being absolutely massive.

GU009 and GU013 tell you how quickly things were moving

GU009: San Francisco came in 1998. GU013: Ibiza arrived in 1999. Not much time. Completely different scale.

San Francisco is moodier. A little psychedelic. More restrained. Ibiza feels cleaner. Brighter. More obviously built around late-90s progressive trance at its peak.

You can hear Sasha changing. You can hear the scene changing. You can hear production getting bigger.

That’s why owning both makes more sense than treating them as competing mixes. Together, they tell a story.

Does GU013 still hold up?

Yeah. Very easily. Some of the synth sounds are pure 1999. Fine. That’s exactly what I want.

The bit that hasn’t dated is the discipline. Long tracks aren’t treated as a problem. Transitions get time. The big records are allowed to develop fully.

And the mix understands that euphoria is only useful if you’ve got something less euphoric around it. That’s probably why Xpander still hits. Why Perception still feels gorgeous. Why Heaven Scent still feels like a proper ending instead of a cliché.

This is the sort of album where reading the tracklist sells it

Someone doesn’t need to be told: This item is collectible.

They need to get halfway down CD2 and see: Perception. Xpander. Mercury & Solace. Heaven Scent. And suddenly the mix is playing in their head again.

That’s the conversion. Memory first. Desire second. Ownership third. Much stronger than manufactured urgency.

Related on The Mix Archive

• Sasha profile
• Global Underground feature
• GU009 San Francisco Collector’s Shelf
• Global Underground collection

Want the complete GU013 build back?

If My Lexicon, Nothing Left, Stage One, Perception, Xpander, Mercury & Solace or Heaven Scent is back in your head, hear the full build again. The famous records hit because Sasha makes you wait for them. And sometimes CD2 ends and the natural thought is: Yeah. I want this one back.