Sasha on studio Latimer Road tube station talking about his music.

How did you start?

Well I used to go to the Hacienda in Manchester. It was my place of worship for quite some time! Then I started buying the records I heard. I blagged my first gig when I had about 30 in my collection. It all went from there really. I didn’t own a pair of decks or a mixer till about 3 years after that. It was about the end of 1989 when I got my first gear.

What did you buy?

I started with two Technics decks and a really awful mixer that I found in a bin.

What do you think of the DJ-2000?

I’ve had it about 6 weeks and I’m very impressed with it. The powerful effects are a huge bonus and I’m really excited with what you can get out of it. The most important thing with mixers is how they feel and sound and Roland have got that totally right. The faders and all the knobs; everything just feels right.

What do you use the effects for?

Well, it’s incredible what it can do ‘on the fly’. I mess around with the parameters for everything – feedback on the delays, the resonance, flangers. The speed makes it exciting. Hit a button and wallop. Normally it would take a while to set up, but on the DJ-2000 it’s instant. I can have a track playing on deck one, set up an effect on deck two and preview the effects through the headphones. That way I mix a record through the effects before fading it to the PA – so I can do really interesting mixes.

The filter-bank I use a lot. I mix a track in with the filter-bank closed up and pulsing away. Then, instead of mixing a record in with the bass out like a lot of DJs, I use the resonance and have the filter opening up. It’s amazing.

When I mix CDs, I used to spend hours feeding the record through the filter-bank of a Mutator and opening up. The record going out would be closing down. With the DJ-2000 you get the same effect ‘on the fly’!

I’ve blown people away with simple stuff like the filter and the Flanger, the overdrive and the modulation. The great thing is you can switch from sixteenth note to quarter note and you can pulse the filters in time – it sounds incredible.

Where have you used the DJ-2000 so far?

I have been using it on the new album and on the stuff I did at Real-World with B.T. I did a lot of experimenting with loops and break-beats using the effects from the 2000 and it sounded great.

I also use it at the Tyrant nights. I mess about with tracks that people know really well and they can’t work out how I’m doing it. People think they are re-mixes until they see me messing around with the deck. It’s really weird. It’s the first time I have had people leaning over the DJ booth to see what I’m doing.

Tyrant nights

Tyrant nights happen monthly in The Bomb in Nottingham and The End in London. I run them with Craig Richards. We did it to get away from the whole mainstream thing going on. Lots of the gigs these days are selling out. The sets are getting cheesier and cheesier, they knock out six or seven mix CDs a year…it’s just all money, money, money. Which is fine, I’m in the business to make money, but I also want to make myself happy. I do that by playing the music I want to play. We only started it a year ago and already the name Tyrant has established a very cool and respected name.

Sasha’s kit-list
DJ-2000 / JP-8000 / JD-800 / JV-1080 / GP-100 / SDE-330 / SDX-330 / Boss pedals / TB-303 with a Devilfish conversion / MC-505