As it has been widely noted by the Shanghai media, last time Sasha passed through town, his performance was memorable for all the wrong reasons. After only forty minutes Sasha walked off when his computer crashed, leaving the crowd unsatisfied and none to pleased. An obvious question one could ask was why he opted to leave his record collection back home in favour of a computer in the first place?
In any event, there was no vinyl to be seen either last night, but the booming three and a half hour set was rather more in line with what one would expect one of the world top ‘superstar’ DJ’s to produce. Taking the decks, or rather the iMac, just after midnight, Sasha had the capacity crowd on his side immediately (short memories?) and held them there for most of the night. The midway part of the set did lag a bit, so the crush on the dance floor thinned for a time, but he quickly returned to form during the last hour and the crowd dutifully reappeared. This time, when his computer crashed (yes, once again), he had an already queued CD ready to take over, It seemed few even realised what happened. In fact, many cheered thinking this was part of the show. An assistant rebooted the computer while the music played on.
Computer crashes aside, without question Sasha does have the tracks to back up his credentials. Obviously for his fans this is what counts most – as was the case last night. Nonetheless, one wonders why a DJ of Sasha’s fame insists upon relying on the click of a mouse rather than the (less crash prone) spin of vinyl upon which a good portion of his reputation has been built. His fans have faithfully held on, but the technology keeps letting him down.
Tim Anderson, timothyanderson2005@gmail.com.
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