Sasha — Xpander

The lead track of Sasha's Xpander EP is the record everyone reaches for when they need to explain what progressive trance actually is. A patient 128 BPM groove, a lead arpeggio that never quite resolves, and a breakdown so structurally clean it has been studied by two generations of producers. Xpander did not invent progressive trance — Sasha and Digweed had spent five years defining it in DJ sets — but it is the single record that documents what the genre sounded like at its cleanest.

Sasha wrote the four tracks of the Xpander EP — Xpander, Belfunk, Rabbitweed and Baja — at his home studio in Wales in late 1998 with regular collaborator Charlie May. It was his first solo release for BMG-owned Deconstruction, cut immediately after the Northern Exposure mix compilations had made him one of the two or three most bookable DJs in the world. Sasha has said in interviews that Xpander itself was written 'in an afternoon, around the arpeggio; the rest of the arrangement took a week to get right.'

The signature Xpander arpeggio is a Roland JD-800 patch layered with a Nord Lead 2 saw, running in F# minor at 128 BPM. The bassline is a filtered sub sample from an Access Virus A. The breakdown at 3:20 is the record's teaching moment: everything drops out except the arpeggio and a single sustained pad, held for a full 32 bars before the kick returns doubled and the arpeggio transposes up. The mixdown was cut at Britannia Row Studios in London with engineer Junior Vasquez.

The Xpander EP did not chart high — it peaked at #30 on the UK Singles Chart — but it became one of the most-played peak-time records at Twilo (New York), Space (Ibiza) and Home (London) for the next two years. Muzik magazine ranked it #7 in its 'Records Of The Year 1999' feature; Mixmag ran a full technical breakdown of the arrangement in a January 2000 production feature.

• UK Singles Chart (EP)#30
• Muzik Records Of The Year 1999#7

• 0:00The arpeggio enters solo — sixteen bars before the kick joins.
• 3:20The breakdown. Full drop-out. Thirty-two bars of arpeggio and pad.
• 5:12The arpeggio transposes up a fourth. This is the moment.

• Original 12-inch (1999)

  The EP version on Deconstruction; the canonical mix.

• Radio Edit (1999)

  3:30 promo cut; rarely heard, worth tracking down.

• Sasha 2007 rework

  A subtle re-edit Sasha played on his Involver 2 tour; officially unreleased.

Xpander's specific arrangement template — long groove intro, mid-track climax, patient 32-bar breakdown, transposed reprise — became the default template for progressive-trance productions for the next five years. James Holden has cited it as 'the record that made me realise you could write dance music the way you write chamber music.' Sasha himself opens with it, or closes with it, at essentially every DJ set he has played since 1999.

• The other three tracks on the EP — Belfunk, Rabbitweed and Baja — were originally intended as B-sides but Belfunk in particular got as much DJ play as Xpander itself.
• Sasha wrote the arpeggio on a borrowed JD-800; he bought the same model within a week of finishing the record.
• Charlie May, Sasha's co-producer, went on to co-write BT's This Binary Universe orchestral album in 2006.