Well if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it but nobody saying that means that you can’t ramp it up a notch or two, in Spinal Tap, “These go to eleven” style.
So as Invol2ver continues the lines laid out by its predecessor, it remains a subtle, all enveloping experiment and having taken 4 years in the making, raises Sasha’s game of reproducing and re-mastering other tracks to a whole new level.
Marrying electronic music, old and new technology in a back to basics approach that takes in antique effects pedals, mixing desks and the like to create a white noise, lush, NYC, absorbing soundtrack, the album’s proves almost as rewarding as catching the man like in action. With the title perhaps being a throw back to Sasha’s Russian heritage (“Invol-Ter-Ver”), it’s an insurgent, somewhat revolutionary, call to arms whose uncompromising and relentless drive makes Carl Craig’s “Landcruising” album a relevant cultural counterpoint.
Inherently more advanced than the original, Telefon Tel Aviv’s opener “You Are The Worst Thing in The World” proves this album’s Grand National moment, a smooth intro with a sharp and emotive indie-esque refrain. Elegant and distinguished with a sumptuous acid line and casually mocking vocal, it’s a hugely strong opener and sets up the album’s opening minimalist tranche.
Slipping immediately into a downbeat, laid back section displayed by the richly euphoric “Flesh” by Rone, this moods then reinforced by two Sasha productions, retuning both Ray La Montagne and Adam Parker for the stripped progressive of “Eclipse” and the sharp-witted stabs of “Lowlife” where the Carl Craig analogies first being to take hold.
A change in pace as Sasha’s production partner, Charlie May, who formerly ran The Drum Club in London in the early to mid nineties, unleashes the classic, clashing, upscale breakbeats of “Midnight” which proves the closest thing to an Airdrawndagger moment on the album. Sequing swiftly to into the most banging section of Invol2ver, Arcadia’s “Apparat” is a sensational tune with a vocal line not totally dissimilar to Ultraviolet’s Kites which is then parried off to Home Video’s “That You Might” which once again, pulls the Carl Craig comparison and this time his remix of X-Press 2 “Kill 100” into play.
Ladytron’s “Destroy Everything You Touch” and its dynamic vocal loop that sounds suspiciously like “Jesus Wept” marks the most club devastating record of the album, taking in the breaks style of Hybrid and spewing out a mutated Sasha tinged monster of a tune and the follow up, “Couleurs” by M83 in another highlight as its uplifting and stunning break deftly cedes into the freestyle scat vocal of Invol2ver’s top drawer, headline generating booking, Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser”.
Winding up proceedings with the pleasing Xpander-lite of “3 Little Piggy’s”, the final track in reordering The Engineers “Sometimes I Realise” underscores Sasha’s versatility, as he closes on a dark forboding, almost Depeche Mode syled indie stomper with a menacing bassline which rivals his set closer of a few years back, The Thin White Duke remix of The Killer’s “Mr Brightside” which brings this second Involver album to a rousing and enervating close.
With all its funk embracing basslines and moody eclecticism, Invol2ver and Sasha’s gear are sometime and quite often wrongly labelled “trance” when really his style is best summed up by the term “acid progressive”. By mixing, on the album at least, if not so much live, great vocal lines along with exquisitely produced techno grooves, Sasha’s once again turned over the standard by which other DJ mixes and productions are based but then again, some might say he’s been doing just that for the last twenty years.
Whisper it quietly, or in fact as loudly as you like, Sasha can now be regarded as a fully fledged techno artist like many of the names that served to inspire his journey into sound and it’s that which still marks out his range and individualistic style today. And that compliment’s both long overdue and richly deserved to boot.
