[quote=GrantT]Yesterday I watched Sasha up close play an entire 3hr set from Ableton Live. He didn't use the CD decks or SL1200's once. There's absolutely no doubt about it - he was definitely working hard. There's a [i]huge[/i] amount of effort that goes into his performances.
BUT! The big concern are those that will 'cheat' and cover up sub-standard DJing ability with technology.
As someone who receives a lot of promos from different levels of professional experience, I've certainly seen more than one example of people who aren't much chop on the wheels of steel - but can sure point and click their way through a demo. The problem is that they're not [i]adding[/i] anything to the music by technology. The same, especially after last night, is most definitely NOT the case for Sasha.
This from Ben Korbel - not only the promoter of the gig I was at, but also a previous guest on Diggers' Kiss 100 show and renowned DJ:
[i]Just to give you all a little more idea of the effort that goes into Sasha's new live laptop show. We didn't advertise it in the marketing as Sasha has only been using the laptop for part of his sets up until now, as a third deck (using mostly CD mixing). Last night was the first time he has performed an entire set from laptop. Now just to let you know what's involved.
Sasha has three full time staff whose sole job is to contact labels and producers of tracks Sasha wants to play, requesting the seperated/layered parts of a particular track. When they can't get the parts, they pull the track apart themselves. These parts are then sent to Sasha and loaded onto his laptop. When he mixes in Abelton, he has individual control of the bass note, vocals, percussion etc etc and uses an outboard controller and mixing desk to manipulate and introduce each layer.
Ontop of this he has an outboard fx unit that can change the sound of any layer on a particular track he is mixing. For all intensive purposes he is performing just as live as any electronic band. The reason that it sounds so seemless and programmed is that Sasha spends weeks on his laptop, familiarising himself with his music so that it flows. As for it being boring to look at, this is subjective but I agree an interesting and fair point and there is something cool about the more manual visual aspect of a turntable. Sasha is now developing an integrated controller for his live show with a joystick type device so it might look like he's playing Playstation. Who knows what's next, perhaps DJs with virtual reality goggles! [/i]
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yeah but without charlie may at his side he can only do so much