Airdrawndagger - Sasha > Reviews > A beautifully subtle journey in sound

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Not applicable
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it rate alongside the competition	Outstanding
Value for Money

Advantages:	Beautifully melodic and well produced .
Disadvantages:	Not what you'd expect for some

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Six years in the making, has it been worth the wait? Absolutely!
Sasha’s long awaited artist album is brilliant, and a superb testament to the unique skill, vision, and sophistication of this genre-defining artist. Nothing like you’d expect if you were thinking along the same lines a his previous DJ mix CD’s from GU to Northern Exposure. Sasha breaks new ground providing, instead, a much richer and quite strange blend of sound. Airdrawndagger is an often subdued, yet extremely vivid journey through beautiful, unseen places.
The album begins in a simple and understated way offering little clue of how it may progress. As the tracks continue the journey becomes ever-more profound as it hits sometimes mechanical, biological, fluidic sound scapes that simply blow the mind. Most definitely not a club CD. Airdrawndagger is made to be travelled and absorbed, not danced too.

[Track Breakdown]
Firstly I’d like to note that it would be impossible for me to score each individual track. As I said previously this album is a journey that flows from beginning to end with no breaks. To score tracks would be an insult to the greatness of the whole.

Dremples
A simple and soothing welcoming which really sets the scene for the album without giving too much away.

Mr. Tiddles
Continuing with a flowing vibe, the track has an eerie melody building into a flashing, sweeping array of strings.

Magnetic North
The first track to provide a subtle beat on the album with synths and floating jingles.

Cloud Cuckoo
Carrying on from the previous track the journey continues with a slightly more up-tempo beat with a stirring baseline, overridden with guitar synth and elevating melodies.

Immortal
With some interesting drum patterns and a screeching baseline this is one of my personal favourites on the album.

Fundamental
Coming closer to a progressive house track but keeping the same style of the CD this is probably the chunkiest the album gets.

Bolieroom
Follows in a similar fashion with some more break beats topped with twisted electro sounding synths building into a melodic breakdown.

Bloodlock
You can feel the influence of James Holden in this track by a long way and following nicely from Fundamental and Boileroom before coming back to the roots of the albums subtle melodies.

Requiem
this track feels like the calm before the subtle yet epic ending to the album. Losing the drums, bringing the atmosphere levels up a notch to a climatic flow of delayed melodies to a new dawning so to speak.

Golden Arm
A more club friendly track but keeping true to the albums style. Standard kick drums with hats, jumpy baseline and bouncing synths.

Wavy Gravy
Flowing chords with a fantastic drum pattern all accompanied by a trademark Sasha melodic arrangement ending with swirly strings.

Incidently I managed to get my copy of this CD signed by the man himself at Tribal Sessions @ Sankeys. A CD I will treasure for a long time.