The Monday Northern Exposure nights at Heaven in London

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The 'Underground' Is An Imaginary Place That Never Actually Existed, Outside The Fantasies Of Boys In Record Shops, A Throw Back To The Punk Days, A Redundant Philosophy. What Matters Now Is The Result, Only That.

Was Northern Exposure just a tour then? I know they were Monday night events, I thought they had a residency at Heaven as well, because the Muzik article mentions: "It's this chemistry which makes 1500 people go bonkers at Heaven in London on a Monday night" (from the October 1996 issue).

I'm happy to edit that line if it's wrong!

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Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

Whats with all this sasha fanboyism?

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Originally posted by iTakeBathSalts Whats with all this sasha fanboyism?

He was Son of God, don't you know.

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Everyone has an opinion. Mine just happens to be a little more informed than most.
Electronic Music Critic: Near-Daily Ruminations Of Music I Own, In Alphabetical Order!

quote:

Originally posted by Sykonee He was Son of God, don't you know.

Yeah, i remember that issue LOL.

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Originally posted by Sykonee He was Son of God, don't you know.

lol, you can check this reading the comments on youtube of his set @mixmag this year.

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Originally posted by rubez stupid fags. this board is for discussion. you are clearly not familiar with the works, and just like to post pointless shit for the sake of it. it goes without saying i don't need permission to try it out for myself. if you don't know the subject, fuck off.

Most people would listen to the music before they start a thread discussing it. Exceptions are for future releases and rumours.
I bought the first two compilations on CD about four years ago myself. Had the Expeditions CD a while before that as well.
If I was unfamiliar with the thread topic, I would probably just ignore it, but with such a famous title, I expected a bit more of the OP.

I honestly thought that this was a reply to another thread, I mean what kind of start to a thread is

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looks like there are 3 installments of this series.

?
A quick glance at Discogs or something would confirm that for you.

adding this brilliant statement as well

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firmly rooted in the start of my trance career, i didn't experience these first hand, so what are/were they like?

just made me confused. Are you asking just for the opinions of those who either attended the Northern Exposure events or listened to the compilations around the time they were released?

I'd understand this thread more if it was about some event in the past you were unable to listen to today (due to it not being available for download/rare cd/vinyl releases etc) or if you wanted to know what the atmosphere was like etc during the event.
But with all three compilations being easily found on the likes of youtube, I fail to see anything in your original post but fucking laziness.

And regarding your S Club 7 comment: No, I did not listen to S Club 7. At that time I was into the likes of Absolute Music 25, Bomfunk MC's - In Stereo and Mc Music 5, because I was ten years old.
I fail to see how that's in any way relevant to the thread though.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J ... That said, the intro gambit of Breeder's Tyrantanic melting like glacier ice into Space Manoeuvres' Stage One is a truly spine-tingling moment and one of the highlights of the whole series. ...

That's easily the part that made the biggest part on me personally and seems to always get conjured up in my head anytime someone mention the series!

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Okay, I'll try and put this thread to good use... The first one was released in 1996 as a tie-in with the duo's Northern Exposure night which ran at Heaven in London on a Monday night. The duo wanted to start a regular event which would draw in the music lovers who appreciated long and varied sets and didn't just expect anthem after anthem. As Sasha told Muzik magazine: "If you get a crowd at your club on a Monday night it's because they're into their music. Whereas a Saturday crowd will see something in a magazine and turn up expecting to be entertained." In keeping with the ethos of the night, the first compilation avoids the obvious anthems of the day. Although modern listeners may believe that the tracks on Northern Exposure were being dropped by Sasha and Diggers in a club, the majority of the first disc was actually headed towards "classic" status even by 1996. "On the Northern Exposure album, there was a lot of tunes we'd maybe listened to when we'd come in from a night out that we wouldn't be able to play in the club because they weren't appropriate. They're great records that we could listen to but we could never play them out" Digweed told Triple J in Australia. "We just wanted to choose stuff from our back catalogues and our record collections," Sasha continued, "They were classic records to us but perhaps forgotten classics". Consequently the first disc encapsulates the vintage ambient house sounds of the early '90s, ultra-long psychedelic remixes by The Orb meeting the blissed out breakbeat sounds of San Fran's Hardkiss Records, the early progressive house vibes of Guerilla Records and the globe-trotting ethno-dub of Banco De Gaia. Many of the tracks are heavily re-edited in ProTools with additional FX and soundscapes layered into the mix, creating something a million miles away from a live club set but conjuring a delectable head-food global travelogue. It reaches a sublime pinnacle with Spooky's seminal Xylem Flow remix of William Orbit's chill-out classic Water From A Vine Leaf - a truly timeless piece of glistening progressive majesty. While the second disc contains a few classic cuts of its own, such as Underworld's achingly delicate remix of The Drum Club's Sound System, it's mostly a look forward to what would become the future sound of progressive house. Arranged in a slow-burning and stripped down set, tracks like the pounding Junior Vasquez remix of Pete Lazonby's Wave Speech or Evolution's anthemic The Phoenix sound remarkably like the massing clouds of Twilo. Northern Exposure 2 followed only a year later and like the original, was published by Ministry Of Sound. "People may think it's weird that we've teamed up with the Ministry," admitted Sasha, "But they were on the ball and were ready to stick their necks out for us." Like the first compilation, NE2 is divided into a home-listening first disc and a more clubbed-up second, but this time round the roles are arguably reversed: by stitching together a disparate array of cutting edge breakbeats, Disc One offers a proleptic glimpse of the breakbeat progressive sound that would inform Sasha's Airdrawndagger album and lead Digweed to found Bedrock Breaks. The eclecticism of this disc is perhaps even more impressive than the first Northern Exposure. Where else can you hear the sultry tones of Gus Gus' Believe rubbing shoulders with the electro-phunk of Violet, or Australian big beat novelties Frontside next to goa-trance favourites Prana? Once again Sasha and Diggers combed through their collections to showcase records that they would never get chance to drop in a regular club set. Just as the first NE peaks with a Spooky remix, the disc builds to a marvelous mid-set peak where Doi-Oing's shimmering ethereal classic Blue melts drip by synthetic drip into the Live Mix of Spooky's classic Little Bullet, before dropping the emotional intensity down to the bare beats of Uberzone and regrouping for an attempt at the sweeping orchestral summit of Hybrid's Symphony. Continuing the role reversal, for large parts of its duration Disc Two is a rerun of the glory days of early '90s trance, with "forgotten classics" courtesy of Cygnus X, Speedy J and Sven Vath setting the tone, before Sasha and Digweed move towards a barrage of anthemic up-front progressive trance from LSG, Transa and Armin Van Buuren to end the compilation. Although the cover sleeve warns the listener that tracks were sourced from vinyl and surface noise can still be heard, Northern Exposure is as much a laser-etched studio creation as its older brother. Subtle re-edits and additional FX are audible throughout to those familiar with the originals, and the mixing style is remarkably nuanced. Witness the moment when Humate's 3.2 emerges almost imperceptibly into the mix and you realise that Sasha and Digweed are deliberately constructing the mix with spliff-head studio detail for post-club comedown engrossment. For my money Northern Exposure 2 is without question the high point of the trilogy. After a two-year hiatus, Northern Exposure Expeditions touched down in 1999 to end the series. The most conventional of the three, Expeditions unfortunately does away with the "post-club disc" concept and instead presents two sets of fairly straight-up progressive house and trance of the variety that was ruling the cooler side of clubland at the turn of the millenium. There's still a sprinkling of classic cuts to be heard, most notably Delta Lady's Renaissance classic Anything You Want, but the concept is less adventurous. The track that was excised was actually the Fade Sanctuary remix of Silence on the US edition, in an echo of how Global Underground 009 emerged Stateside stripped of Der Dritte Raum's Hale Bopp due to licensing issues. The removal of such a skyscraping anthem undoubtedly harms the flow of the first disc, and first-time listeners are advised to seek out the British release for this reason. For me the unadventurous presentation of Expeditions marks it out as the least interesting of the three. That said, the intro gambit of Breeder's Tyrantanic melting like glacier ice into Space Manoeuvres' Stage One is a truly spine-tingling moment and one of the highlights of the whole series. Hopefully that provides a bit of insight so this isn't just "yet another Northern Exposure thread". And for what it's worth, I wrote all of that myself apart from the quotes. I always had it in my head to write a full article on Northern Exposure one day.

this is what i was looking for - some history and personal reflection. excellent retrospective.

surprised the first one was as far back as 1996 - no wonder they passed me by at the time.

indeed it was silence that was edited out, my bad. surprised dance music runs into licensing issues really, i thought it flowed relatively freely. though i suppose delerium are more of a pop act, probably signed to a big label who actively scan for infringements... then again der dritte raum are a real underground act, so don't know why their track got pulled from GU.

the series sounds like some excellent headphone material, love to hear how the sounds have changed and just how well some of it stands up - even putting newer standards to shame.

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i suppose delerium are more of a pop act, probably signed to a big label who actively scan for infringements... then again der dritte raum are a real underground act, so don't know why their track got pulled from GU.

They were pulled because the UK releases were released before the US ones, so when they went back for the US license the acts wanted too much money, so they either had to pull the release or remove the track, as with Communicate where Morel - True (The ****** Is You) was replaced with Sven Vath - Barbarella

The US version of Communicate is a far better version by the way.

___________________
The 'Underground' Is An Imaginary Place That Never Actually Existed, Outside The Fantasies Of Boys In Record Shops, A Throw Back To The Punk Days, A Redundant Philosophy. What Matters Now Is The Result, Only That.

"gambit"

lol ^^^