This Autumn the lauded dance music legends Sasha and Digweed revisit, rework and expand their seminal progressive-dub-trance-breaks odyssey, Northern Exposure. This three disc set will finally debut on streaming platforms, alongside deluxe edition CD and vinyl editions and a Deluxe Box Set, with brand new art, packaging and extensive sleeve-notes.
The original version of Northern Exposure was released in 1996, as a putative successor to their hit compilation, The Mix Collection, which was the first gold certified mix released in the UK, and sold over 200,000 copies worldwide. “There was quite a lot of pressure to live up to that,” recalls Sasha. "But we didn’t want to just deliver a Saturday night peak-time album. We wanted to capture the whole environment – the atmosphere that’s around the dancefloor, around our peak sets, what goes on after hours, and what goes on before.”
The pair had slowly been building a following in the US, and whilst, most notably in Orlando, they gained exposure to a burgeoning American breakbeat scene. “After the “Mix collection”, we thought, we’ve got to do something completely different with this – and the introduction of all those breaks, we knew no-one would be expecting that,” comments Digweed. “Disc 1 would not have sounded like that if it wasn’t for the fact that we’d been playing in Florida, where those breaks were massive. Someone over there gave us the Young American Primitive album, and records by the Rabbit in the Moon, the Hallucination, and Hardkiss stuff, which had a big impact because it wasn’t just breakbeat, it was the atmosphere that went with it”.
Very much a product of now, for the newly added Disc 3, Sasha and Digweed utilised modern technology adding their own magic touch. The duo have created something new, somewhere between ambient reworks and dubs, where tracks pulse weightlessly, focussing on melody, mood and otherworldly sound design. “We rebuilt and reshaped the material using modern tools. But we embraced the character and beautiful imperfections of the original pieces of music. We tried to refocus it through a modern lens, drawing inspiration from reinterpretations by dub artists like Bill Laswell and Mad Professor. It feels like we discovered a forgotten version that was hiding behind the beats.”
In summary then, this is a classic, timeless snapshot of a time and place. “There’s something about the atmosphere of this album that really is wonderful. And it also shows the birth of a sound that’s turned into this behemoth of a music scene. It’s become this gigantic sound around the world. And some of the music that we put onto this album was the beginnings of it all. Sonically it stands up, too. The fact that 30 years later, it’s getting re-released is mental - and great!”
Is there already a preorder option somewhere?
