Fundacion NYC [SPECIAL EDITION]

Sasha

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 21, 2005)
• Original Release Date: May 31, 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Special Edition
• Label: Fundacion
• ASIN: B0007YXQ4G
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #138,506 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Wax will always have its place of honor, but MIDI controllers, laptops and other forms of technical wizardry continue to inspire DJs throughout the land. In 2004, one of the world’s most popular, Sasha, performed extended aural surgery on his Involver release, molding ten tracks into a softer, vaguely ambient, yet still lethally danceable mélange. But live, the studio tricks didn’t translate with such panache. So he built his own tool, a box of circuits, knobs and processors he calls MAVEN, and took it for a test run on Fundacion. The result, ironically, will make you forget all about the fancy gadgetry, since that’s not the side of the brain that involves motor function. More house-oriented and playful, this is Sasha’s most overtly dance floor-oriented release since 1999’s Ibiza. 17 tracks are thoroughly diced and sliced, served up hot with sides of electro ("Electromagnetic") and driving pop (the album-ending one-two punch of Goldfrapp and M83, for instance). Say what you will about DJs without turntables, but no matter how innovative the means, the end goal remains the same: delirious crowds and late-night bliss. In a world where music has broken up into tiny digital pieces, astute artists like Sasha are only adapting. --Matthew Cooke

Product Description
2004 Grammy Award Nominee Sasha returns with the highly anticipated follow-up to the hottest and most critically acclaimed electronic music album of 2004: Involver. To be clear, the most exciting thing about this release is that this is not "Involver 2", the Involver concept is Sasha finding the space between artist, producer, and DJ. Fundacion on the other hand, is a whole new take on DJing. He's given up the turntables and CD players in exchange for a custom designed mixing setup that uses the Ableton "Live" software and a one of a kind controller that Sasha has dubbed "MAVEN" to create a never before heard kind of mixing.

To showcase this new technology and its sonic capablities, Sasha launched a bi-coastal residency (at New York's Crobar and Los Angeles's Avalon) with the closing party in New York being the launch party for the fruition of the entire endeavor: the Fundacion mix CD.

Fundacion will be the recorded version of what Sasha has been doing live at his residencies: effortless on-the-fly re-edits, mash ups, and flawless blends.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Work of Art, June 23, 2005

By	JKirwood (San Diego) - See all my reviews

Wow, what the heck just happened to me? I remember putting the CD in my car stereo at lunch... but what transpired after that was some sort of out of body experience. It felt like someone lopped off the top of my skull and poured in a mixture of warm taffy, a running chainsaw and a fluffy cloud. When I tried to go back to work, I stared at the wall of my cubicle for a long time.

I'm not quite sure how to wrap my head around this CD, but, without a doubt, it's a stroke of genius. The complexity of the mixes and tweaking of each track in this CD weave a sonic tapestry that, with each listen, expose new threads of sound that make up a very complex whole. The lines we are used to drawing between songs in the past are becoming more increasingly blurred in the electronic realm. The desire to go to this track or that track and skipping around to the best songs on a CD is a practice that is slowly getting thrown out the window. Electronic mixes have a greater purpose as a whole, rather than a sum of its parts. Sasha's latest work has taken that concept to a new level. Fundacion is a concept more than just a CD. Pushing the boundaries of sound creation and manipulation, the battle for the newest frontier in music is being fought right here.

This is not a band trying to push the edge of musical instruments that have been around for fifty years. This is something you've never heard before. Buy this work of art, and be a part of the future of music.

45 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Mix Album, 2005: Experimental Electro-House, Expertly Blended, June 29, 2005

By	Ian Vance (pagosa springs CO.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First, let's have a moment of perspective:

Studio technology began to progress by leaps and bounds in the mid-to-late 1960's, an evolution in correlation to the boundary-stretching of music in general during this chaotic time. The Beatle's seminal *St. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band* utilized samples, loops and creative effects in a way that could not be reproduced in a live environment; Phil Spector's famous 'Wall of Sound' fashioned monuments of overdubbing that, upon final production, gave the listener a sense of vastness, of space and depth not normally associated with the verse-chorus-verse construction of top-40 pop. Naturally the techniques pioneered during this era have expanded exponentially in the subsequent four decades, with virtually any effect or sound-fusion now possible to the music-pioneer...the only limitation being the artist's imagination. In fact, technology has _condensed_ to such an extreme extent that, for a small investment, virtually anyone can have a miniature studio on their desktop, with the same technology that used to cost thousands of dollars now available at the click of a mouse.

These are perilous times for the disc-jockey: Ipods, file-sharing and mixing software have all but made the occupation obsolete - until now, with the advent of Ableton Live. By mixing together individual WAVS of sound through this sophisticated software, one can manipulate, chop-up, reconstruct and remix songs in an entirely new way, have a far more "hands on" process to the dynamic construction of the mix. World famous DJ Sasha has championed the creative benefits of Ableton for the past couple of years, claiming it has re-invigorated his style and artistic goals. *Involver*, Sasha's last album, was the debut of his new Ableton-inspired methods, a multi-texture masterpiece of breakbeat prog-trance. Now comes *Fundacion*, Sasha's 'Mix Album' for 2005, a showcase for how he uses Ableton in a live environment - compiled and spliced together in just a few days, it captures the raw outflow of his recent New York City residency. And like most Sasha releases, it's pretty far ahead of the bell curve: at least three or four proper listens are needed to understand the sum totality of this new creative endeavor.

With that said, *Fundacion* is probably my least favorite Sasha release to date, though more for the actual music 'involved' (pardon the pun) than the mixing or programming, both of which are exemplary. The electronic club scene, as of late, has existed in a sort of treading-water state: after the fallout of trance circa 1999, and the dark progressive bollox that followed in its wake, the return of melody and a generally more creative approach to production have (thankfully) alleviated some of the stagnant airs that seemed to infuse dance-dungeons. After the big progressive-breaks scene of 2004, the club sound and the DJs that play it have veered towards a nostalgia-laden, 80's-influenced mishmash of electro-pop, tech and house, an almost desperate attempt to put fun back into the music - some funk and soul into an essentially machine-dominated enterprise. Unfortunately the results have been middling: most of the 80's remixes as of late are inferior to the source material, while recent mixes by Klienenberg, Seaman etc. come off less than impressive when compared to that which came before. Sasha had already dipped his hand in electro with the much-debated 'Watching Cars Go By' remix on *Involver*; with this new album, he plunges into the genre head-first, crafting in turn perhaps his most experimental and overall seamless mix-album to date - and consequently, perhaps his least enjoyable.

A warning of this arrives early in the mix, with the ridiculously cheesy (yet appropriate for electro) vocodor intro; out of it gently pulses 'Four Squares', a standout track and the only unabashed melody of the album. From this point on it is futile to discuss individual tracks, for Sasha's Ableton set-up, coupled with his new Maven controller (I refuse to succumb to the meme and put it all in caps), allows him to easily mix elements of a track four or five songs before it emerges, and to keep other elements - a snare, high-hat, or trance-riff - long after the song from which it came has left the mix. Overall: the mix builds through sexy 4/4 grooves over the course of 25 minutes, then abruptly changes course with the introduction of the Holden songs. From here *Fundacion* takes on an experimental, fairly minimalist approach for the remainder of the running time, peaking with the Depeche Mode remix of 'Behind the Wheel'. After this, Sasha strips it down to a monolithic soundscape of effects and (very) prominent 4/4 kickdrum, peaking it again with the guitar-growling Goldfrap tune and the colorless outro. Although I can appreciate what Sasha is doing here - and can even hear the sections built entirely out of different elements, including the much-touted "five songs at once" peak - it doesn't excuse how utterly boring the last thirty minutes of *Fundacion* get... listening through it every time becomes a chore, an endurance test, to the point that the fade-out of the distorted vox of the last track comes as a much-needed relief to the overall gloom of monotony (and perhaps that's the point).

Granted, this mix is devoted to his New York residency, and this sort of dark electro-house might be all the rage in that ever-clanging city environment...but compared to all Sasha has done in the last few years, this album comes up more than a bit short. There's not much 'fun' in *Fundacion,* despite the obvious intent; but, overall, this is an extremely interesting album, revolutionary in its own way, and a strong indication of the potential to come. Hopefully Sasha will ditch this trendy electro-house sound and come up with something more substantial for *Fundacion L.A.*

3 ½ stars, rounded down. Recommended for DJs and Sasha enthusiasts.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Definatly not Involver 2, but landmark mixing and great first half, June 23, 2005

By	David G (Tasmania, Australia) - See all my reviews

I thought it was time someone gave this CD its proper due review, rather than the 5-star "it was good" or 1-star "I didn't like it".

This newest release from Sasha sees the internationally renowned DJ/producer/remixer create a set of nu-age House tracks to achieve the dance floor/club feeling that Involver hinted at ("Dorset Perception" & "On My Own"), but never quite delivered (going for the chilled side of electronica instead). Having abandoned vinyl and CDs since his last mix album, the stunning Involver, Sasha once again makes full use of his Ableton/Maven digital mixing setup, but this time in a club environment.

Indeed, his mixing skills using the Maven have reached such a level that he doesn't merely phase songs into each other, but rather combines them into a unique collage (as the cover suggests) that is so wonderful it evokes a kind of bliss of its own. I would say without a doubt this is the finest mixing I have ever heard, Sasha is in a league of his own. The album is worth repetitive listens if for nothing more than to (try) and see where tracks start, finish, and in many, cases re-emerge. Five-star mixing in anyone's club (or CD player).

Now to the music. As aforementioned Sasha has fashioned this collage of cuts purely out of House tracks, no breakbeats here (damn). The awesome space-age intro track "Rise of the Machine" gives a good idea of the nu/electro-house vibe Sasha brings across the whole album. Track 2 "Four Squares" (perfect opener) is pure ambient bliss; this then proceeds to morph seamlessly into a couple of sweet laid back grooves which seamlessly explode with energy on tracks 5, 6, & 7. Track 8 "99 & A Half" is a bit a dull moment but once the next tunes, two mixes of Holden & Thompson's "Come to Me", take us back to the eerie and wondrous soundscape.

At this point Fundacion has earned 4-5 stars for track selection, but what follows spoils the vibe just like Felix Da Housecat's "Watching the Cars Go By" did on Involver, except this time instead of one track it's EIGHT (yes 8, although to be fair I rather like "Behind the Wheel" and the last track "Don't Save Us From the Flames"). While these final eight tracks are mixed so skillfully, they replace a lush futuristic atmosphere/soundscape with funky, sometimes dull tracks that go for big baselines and a heavy rather than anything to capture you EMOTION, which has always been Sasha's trademark (as well as his mixing). Goldfrapp's "Strict Machine" is horrible; the beat (4/4 and too slow to dance to) sounds like someone bashing a wall with a sledgehammer. The last track offers some respite but by this time it's too late for any euphoria to set in.

In conclusion: a landmark in mixing, enjoyable to a point, and certainly not a waste of money. Involver fans should go for Northern Exposure (Vol. 1 & Vol. 2: East are the best ones to start on) or Airdrawndagger instead, all top-quality releases and far more chilled. I'd recommend listening to the last half of Fundacion if you're unsure of buying as this is the part you're most likely not to like. Still, most Sasha fans will be able to appreciate this little club/house experiment, as the pros weigh out the cons. 3 stars for track selection and hands-down 5 star mixing.