Arista cat. 74321 947862
Released 2002

Track list:
1. Drempels (1:23)
2. Mr. Tiddles (4:53)
3. Magnetic North (5:17)
4. Cloud Cuckoo (8:26)
5. Immortal (4:54)
6. Fundamental (9:13)
7. Boileroom (7:04)
8. Bloodlock (7:53)
9. Requiem (6:08)
10. Golden Arm (5:45)
11. Wavy Gravy (7:29)


IN BRIEF: The one you’ve been waiting for.

By far the most requested subject of review down the years at TC has been Sasha. Since the Man Like received TC’s prestigious first 10/10 for the Xpander EP way back in 2004 we’ve come a long way as a website, improving both the quality of our research (“Sasha’s seminal debut”, eh, Syk? [It was Discog's fault -Syk]) and the size of our review database, but although that database now includes four more Sasha reviews, the requests haven’t dried up. By far the most popular request has been for Airdrawndagger, a request we’ve spurned because we’ve had important, erm, Tiesto records to, uh, cover. But since it’s Christmas, and our five year anniversary to boot, here’s my present to all those readers who’ve asked for it: a full-fledged review of Airdrawndagger.

Although it’s now eight years old and in no danger of remaining relevant, the album is actually badly in need of a retrospective review. There are few dance records out there with more mixed reviews, and now the context of the album’s release is safely historical it’s possible to take an objective view of the huge storm of opposing opinion surrounding the damn thing.

Historically, Airdrawndagger will be remembered as a flop: it received a middling critical reception and although it reached #18 on the UK album chart it underperformed considerably even compared to disappointing albums from other electronic stars such as Orbital, Faithless and the Chemical Brothers during the same period. And yet, ask around online or amongst clubbers and you’ll probably find a generally positive, even nostalgic opinion of the album.

The reason is simple. Alexander Coe had been promising an artist album since he first exploded in popularity in the early 1990s. Indeed, during his more debauched moments of superstardom, Sasha would claim he’d been locked in the studio working on his album to explain cancellations and no-shows. After several years of excuses, tantalising references in interviews and a steady stream of brilliant EPs, expectation began to grow exponentially for Sasha to deliver his mythical long player. By 2002, the critics and established fans had been waiting almost a decade, and as is so-often the case, the end product failed to match the enormous weight of expectation.

At the same time, a very different audience was happening across the record, an audience with no critical voice to contribute to the historical record and no expectations to weigh the album down. By 2002 trance was in the last throes of worldwide dancefloor dominance. An entire generation of clubbers who’d been inducted into the scene during the millennial epic trance zenith were making the transition from Gatecrasher to Global Underground and more serious, reputable dance music. Turned on to Sasha by the success of Xpander across the trance scene, they encountered Airdrawndagger en mass at exactly the right moment. Sasha toured the album worldwide that year and the youthful demographic he enthralled, particularly in the US, grew up to be the serious clubbers of today. To many of them Airdrawndagger is a pivotal moment in their musical development, regarded with nothing short of reverence.

So where does Airdrawndagger really lie? Is it the underwhelming flop of the history books or the progressive classic of many people’s sentiments? The answer, obviously, is somewhere between those two poles.

What’s striking about Airdrawndagger is just how much like a Sasha set it sounds. Many jocks have tried their hand at artist albums in the past twenty years, but this is a DJ’s album in the purest sense. It’s constructed like a mix set from start to finish, each track seamlessly blending into the next with close control of rhythm and tempo. It builds from an ambient intro through breaks and into 4/4 beats to climax with the killer single, the tempo of each track sliding up from a sub-120 start to the same 130-or-so-bpm plateau so many Sasha sets reach. Needless to say, the structure and flow are immaculate, and this is an album that demands playing all the way through for the full effect.

While this is probably Airdrawndagger’s greatest strength, it’s almost certainly it’s biggest creative weakness. For not only did Sasha look to his DJ sets for inspiration, he looked very closely at the records he would use on such mixes, and then recreated them closely with the studio help of Charlie May, James Holden and Junkie XL. This is an endlessly referential album, packed with nods to countless classic Sasha anthems. The studio helpers weren’t drafted by accident: the influence of Spooky and Holden is writ large across the album, as are the sounds of Eat Static, Scott Hardkiss the FSOL, Orbital (Immortal is an astonishingly faithful style-bite of the Middle Of Nowhere sound) and many others.

Airdrawndagger is essentially Sasha remaking his favourite records of the previous ten years of electronic music and then slotting those remakes into a small-scale DJ mix. It’s an understandably “safe” way of making an artist album, particularly a long-awaited debut, but it doesn’t result in a particularly fresh or distinctive creative product. Sasha is so wrapped up in living up to his favourite music he never really creates anything of his own. Xpander, despite its use of the Little Bullet hook, was a cutting edge record, as were Arkham Asylum, Ohmna and, to a lesser extent, Be As One and Heart Of Imagination. They encapsulated the very limit of progressive, well, progress when they were released, which is why each one sounds so drastically different to its predecessor. By reversing the trend and making a record so carefully classic in approach, Sasha was aiming for timelessness but missed the point. Timeless records transcend their immediate context because they are realised with singular and powerful creative visions that are not tied to trend or technology. They do not immortalise their appeal through careful manipulation of existing reference points. If Sasha had continued to push the progressive paradigm into unexplored territory he would have created a much more resonant record than the timidly trad album he ended up with.

All of which is not to say it’s a complete failure. There are a handful of wonderful moments on Airdrawndagger. Fundamental is one of the best progressive breaks tracks ever made, Magnetic North is a fine piece of liquid ambient and the closer Wavy Gravy is an example of the intrepid dancefloor approach the album needed more of. Everything is perfectly produced with a distinctively crisp shininess and as you’d expect from Sasha it flows with captivating smoothness, the highlights augmented by the album’s bigger picture. It just isn’t the album it could have been. Sasha’s music had always had plenty of home listening value: the Xpander EP is probably a better headphone record than this one, and certainly a more timeless one.

For the clubbers of 2002 who’d never heard its like before it’s understandable that this album sounded unreal, and once that kind of impression has bedded into your musical youth there’s no dislodging it. Heard through less sentimental ears, Airdrawndagger is an album that deserves more credit than it original received, but it’s far from the classic some plaudits some would have you believe. And if that isn’t quite the verdict you’ve waited years to read, then it’s only appropriate.

Ace Tracks:
Magnetic North
Fundamental
Wavy Gravy


Written by SYSTEM-J for TranceCritic.com. May not be reproduced or republished without the consent of TranceCritic.com. © All rights reserved.

Title: Sasha - Airdrawndagger
Category: Album
Sub Category: Progressive
Reviewer: SYSTEM-J
Related Link: http://www.djsasha.com/
Added: December 26th 2009
Viewed: 886 Times
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