Prepare for Another Masterclass by Sasha & John Digweed at Ultra Music Festival

Three decades ago, on a fateful night at Hastings Pier on the southern coast of England, John Digweed found himself sharing the decks with an emerging British DJ named Sasha. That night was the catalyst for one of the most celebrated duos in dance music.

"It was an instant connection," Sasha, real name Alexander Paul Coe, tells New Times from his home in Ibiza.

Most dance music fans these days default to talking about how a particular act pushes the bass to its limit and the "vibe" they create. And that is certainly true of Sasha and John Digweed — the pair's melodic, disorienting music is a thrilling experience.

Yet, the real reason to see the duo is a chance to relive history going back to that night at Hastings Pier, their famed residency at New York's Twilo, and one of the most important pieces of electronic music, their 1994 debut mix, Renaissance: The Mix Collection.

"When John and I play, we never rehearse what we're doing," Sasha says. "We love to be spontaneous and surprise each other. That's been an ongoing 'jewel' between us. I also got a lot of new music from producers about a week before, and I have stuff I'm working on that I will test out."

Still, Sasha thinks it's a mistake to say he and Digweed pioneered the progressive house genre. "When the term was first applied to the genre, it was sort of applied in a mean way by a journalist who tried to tie it to progressive rock and made a Spinal Tap reference." It appears writing for Mixmag, Dom Philips coined the term and defined the new sound as a "new breed of hard but tuneful, banging but thoughtful, uplifting and trancey British house."
To Sasha, the sound he and Digweed produce falls somewhere between techno and house. "Of course, there's a melodic element to it, but the formulaic tracks on the charts mean nothing to me," he adds. According to Sasha, the beauty of electronic music and its longevity is not trademarking one sound but the ability to split music apart and transplant it to another sound. "The reason why electronic music has been around for so long and been so brilliant is because genres keep blending with each other, and a new genre pops out."

How and what the two play matters little. Instead, it's the synchronicity between Sasha and Digweed that has stood the test of time. Renaissance made the duo the poster children for a new dawn of electronic music. The mix's future-looking sound led to their legendary residency at Twilo and the marathon sets that came with it.

"America played a huge part in us being so together," Sasha adds. "I think we both felt that as America was developing in the mid-'90s, if we stuck together and played together, we would be stronger — especially with the marathon sets."

What followed was the pair's equally seismic 1996 mix album Northern Exposure, which Sasha describes as "after-the-after-party music."

"No one had put music like that onto a CD. We had Future Sound of London, Rabbit in the Moon, and North American Primitive," he points out. "All this music with electro and breaks." Still, the vision wasn't apparent to everyone upon its release, with DJ Mag bestowing it a zero out of ten in its review of the record. "And then about ten years later, they boasted it as one of the best mix CDs ever made," Sasha says, laughing.
Around 2010, Sasha and Digweed went on hiatus to focus on their work as solo artists. "We decided we needed a little break from each other. We were living in each others' pockets, and it ended up lasting a few years," Sasha explains. "We focused on our solo stuff — John with his label Bedrock, me with my stuff, and my label Last Night on Earth. I don't think either of us intended for it to last that long."

In 2016, after having dinner with friends in Tokyo, they decided it was time to join forces once again. "It was like, 'What are we doing?' We immediately reconnected and said we should start playing music together again," Sasha says.

Though a Sasha and John Digweed set can be described as fluid and technically flawless, the duo's brilliance behind the decks is partly due to what each brings to the decks.

"John has this extremely hypnotic intensity, and I play slightly differently. It pulls me into his vortex," Sasha explains. "We have this wonderful crossover, a middle ground where we find each other."

Ultra Music Festival 2024. Friday, March 22, through Sunday, March 24, at Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; ultramusicfestival.com. Tickets cost $349.95 to $1,499.95 via ultramusicfestival.com/tickets.

Check out New Times' full listing of Miami Music Week 2024 events.