alistair honestly what seemed to happen across the night affected it. The main thing being we were told he was going to be on 12:00 then it became 1. My friend went from the club to collect him at what must have been about 2:00.
However, Denis A who then proceeded to play about 90 minutes longer (at the end of a set he was ‘deliberately holding back on’) meant, and I think I speak for everyone in the club when I say, that we warmed up some nice energy, peaked too soon and the warmup went through the most enjoyable hours on a 10pm start. Eventually the later Sasha got it made Denis go a bit deeper and darker pushing the envelope with more energy (not expecting to STILL be on) that I think the reason he wouldn’t hand over to Sasha on arrival was that he actually wanted to bring it back down to a simmer for the hand over. I’ve heard stories about Sasha being unhappy with warmups and handovers taking it too far so I can imagine the pressure.
None of the group I was with wanted a super late heavy one for various reasons. The sound system kept clipping sometimes during mixing transitions and was being pushed (not by the DJ, it would seem, it was just slightly underpowered and the club is new / developing). So by the time Sasha came on at 2:45 or something we were pushing ourselves to continue and had ear fatigue too.
When Sasha came on he opened with this
Which is a statement of a track (I think called Black Rainbow), but then he got a bit more ‘warm up’ when we were ready for the next level hours ago.
However, an hour in he really got into that wonderous uplifting prog and having not seen him for years just started to realise: I have forgotten what it feels like to be on the dance floor when you see Sasha on form and he just delivered a beauty of a journey.
This video below as he was getting going then I put my phone down and it built and built and got emotional and inspiring and just… brilliant. So glad I stayed.
I finally met him for the first time last night too which was nice.
