With one of the sexiest flyers we've seen in a long time, Sasha, spinning at La Luna last Thursday, was heralded as the "Master of British House"... I wasn't going to go until I bumped into DJ8 at the supermarket and he flicked me a ticket... way thanks my friend...

The next time I saw the aforesaid Mr. 8 he was running over to his car, grinning madly, but cursing the lack of a larger venue in the city... La Luna was packed out, and about two seconds after I walked in the call went out for no more door sales... going upstairs it proved true... with all the usual pool tables and seating moved out, the main room was packed wall to wall... A PA stack at either end... running at maybe below volume, but being steadily cranked up thru the night...

It was 45 minutes in to Sasha's set when I entered, and for some reason it was raining... uh, that's is... sweat dripping from the roof... had this before at ESC, but only the occasional random droplets... hadn't seen sweatrain like this since we played at the Shakespeare in Napier with Shihad and Head LIke a Hole.... the Holes were giving away sweaty dick prints instead of autographs... but I digress... Standing on the spot, down it came... as well as a much needed cool off from the bargoth spraying tapwater over the grinning punters.

Production wise, pretty minimal at Luna... a laser (hey kids, get some new patterns) a blue strobe or two and Predators, the single, roving eye robolights... but looking thru the crowd, there were some nice effects happening... in a differnt life, some video footage of that would have gone down a treat, but I didn't have any free hands... they were in the air...

Sasha plays cheese. Lets get this straight. Dereck Carter plays cheese also, but in a very american kind of way. balls to the wall kind of cheese. Get naked, go down kind of cheese. Sasha plays a very british kind of cheese. Kind of a bit more intellectual, more breakdowns. more intricate tracks, acidisms (no 303s mind you...) the snare rolls... and get this... goa built right in to the house tracks... cool (ooh and cutting edge)... but you can get into it. It was pretty simply mixed, you got a chance to stand there and spin out to some kind of lush digital chordalisms for a bit and for joE raver (oops, clubber), that's what they wanted and got... fuck, I stayed there and boogied till i was wet as... but listen as I might, there were only a few moments that had anything new.

Sasha was safe, tame, predictable, not especially sexy, or even enthusiastic looking, but he did provide a rocking, very, very well sequenced 3 hour set and if you weren't there you missed out on a wicked night out... at a price for an international dj (thirty bucks) which is finally realistic to the promoters... big shouts out to Higher State and DJ8