Sasha: Renaissance, Northern Exposure, Global Underground and Progressive House

If you owned a Renaissance CD purely because Sasha's name was on it, you weren't alone. He's one of those DJs where the mythology arrived almost before the evidence: Mixmag was asking whether he was the Son of God before The Mix Collection had even come out. Then the records turned out to be good enough to justify it. You can hear more of that evolution by putting the 1994 Essential Mix next to San Francisco, the Northern Exposure years and Airdrawndagger. They aren't interchangeable stops on the way to one supposedly definitive sound. Early house selections, long atmospheric mixes and later studio experimentation all complicate the familiar story of the DJ who made Xpander.