Sasha and John Digweed have launched an expanded edition of their seminal mix compilation Northern Exposure, combining both a remastered version of the original with a third disc featuring ambient and dub reworks.
Northern Exposure Redux is released on Late Night Tales/Night Time Stories on 25 September, in CD, vinyl and digital formats, featuring new art, packaging, and extensive sleeve-notes.
Originally released in 1996, Northern Exposure followed on from Sasha & Digweed’s Renaissance: The Mix Collection, which sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide.
“There was quite a lot of pressure to live up to that,” says Sasha. “But we didn’t want to just deliver a Saturday night peak-time album. We wanted to capture the whole environment – the atmosphere that’s around the dancefloor, around our peak sets, what goes on after hours, and what goes on before.”
When Northern Exposure was released, the pair had been building a following in the US, gaining exposure to an emerging breakbeat scene in Florida, for example.
“After The Mix Collection, we thought, we’ve got to do something completely different with this – and the introduction of all those breaks, we knew no-one would be expecting that,” Digweed adds. “Disc 1 would not have sounded like that if it wasn’t for the fact that we’d been playing in Florida, where those breaks were massive. Someone over there gave us the Young American Primitive album, and records by the Rabbit in the Moon, the Hallucination, and Hardkiss stuff, which had a big impact because it wasn’t just breakbeat, it was the atmosphere that went with it.”
The new third disc features material rebuilt and reshaped by Sasha and Digweed using modern production technology. The pair describe the new versions as sitting between ambient reworks and dubs, with a focus on melody, atmosphere and sound design.
“We rebuilt and reshaped the material using modern tools,” they explain. “But we embraced the character and beautiful imperfections of the original pieces of music. We tried to refocus it through a modern lens, drawing inspiration from reinterpretations by dub artists like Bill Laswell and Mad Professor. It feels like we discovered a forgotten version that was hiding behind the beats.”
The reworks draw on material associated with artists including The Orb, Darren Emerson, The Future Sound Of London, William Orbit, Young American Primitive, Rabbit In The Moon and Scott Hardkiss.
For the new edition, the pair have also revisited material connected to the original release. Darren Emerson has contributed a new version of Underworld’s Dark and Long, which closes the second disc.
“Dark and Long first came out in 1994 and was already a monster on the floor, a staple of my Ministry of Sound residency and clubs right across the UK, so it meant a lot when Sasha and John Digweed featured it on their first Northern Exposure back in 1996,” says Emerson.
“Their support gave it another boost and took it to an even wider crowd. So when they asked me to bring a new version to Northern Exposure 30, all these years on, it felt like a real full circle. I’m proud to be part of what they’ve created for this seminal release, and I hope people enjoy hearing it as much as I loved making it.”
Following a busy summer of touring, Sasha & Digweed have upcoming gigs scheduled around the release, at Knockdown Center in Maspeth, New York, on 25 September and Silo’s second anniversary event in Dallas on 3 October. They’ve also confirmed an Australian tour for next March, with events scheduled for Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
Sasha and John Digweed – Northern Exposure Redux is out now. Check it out here. Main photo by Dan Medhurst.
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