Sasha

Alexander Paul Coe — known the world over as Sasha — is one of the most influential figures in dance music history. Born in Bangor, Wales on 4 September 1969 and raised in Manchester, he discovered electronic dance music at The Haçienda in 1988 and began DJing in late 1989. His residency at Shelley's Laserdrome in Stoke-on-Trent in 1990 made him a national figure within the UK rave circuit before he was twenty-one, and the Renaissance (Mansfield) residency that followed was the room where the long-form, slow-developing DJ set that would later be called "progressive house" was effectively invented. The mid-1990s partnership with John Digweed gave Sasha his most consequential editorial work. The Northern Exposure mix-CD series (1996, 1997, 1999) defined progressive house as a distinct subgenre and remains the canonical reference for the form, and the New York Twilo residency the pair shared from the late 1990s into 2001 carried that aesthetic across the Atlantic into the American underground. As a producer Sasha then turned the same instincts toward album-length work — Xpander EP (Deconstruction, 1999), the artist album Airdrawndagger (2002), the mix album Involver (2004) which redefined what a single-deck DJ mix could be, and the late-career resurgence Scene Delete (2016). He was voted DJ Magazine's World No. 1 DJ in 2000 and Grammy-nominated for his "Watching Cars Go By" remix — among the first DJs the Recording Academy formally recognised. He founded Excession Records in 1998 and his current label Last Night On Earth in 2011, launching it with the 'Cut Me Down' single. Now based in Spain, he has remained productive through the 2020s with the Da Vinci Genius album (November 2024), the HiFiHi EP, "Hold On" and "Dead Synthy" through 2025, and the 2026 single "Love Is All You Need."