Thirty years after Northern Exposure turned two DJs’ record collections into a long-form journey through progressive, psychedelic and ambient dance music, Sasha and John Digweed are opening the vault. In partnership with Amplifyd, the pair are auctioning the actual records, acetates and memorabilia that helped build Northern Exposure, Northern Exposure 2, Northern Exposure: Expeditions and Communicate. The auction preview is now live, with bidding beginning Sept. 30, exactly 30 years after the original Northern Exposure arrived. The auction is expected to encompass 100-125 lots drawn equally from the artists’ personal archives.
For anyone who came of age with those compilations, the appeal is less about owning rare vinyl in pristine condition than possessing a physical artifact from the process that made the music. Indeed, these are working records, many bearing the scars of three decades of DJ life. “I love the fact that we’re not selling pristine museum pieces. We’re selling our copies,” Sasha says. “They’ve got writing on them, and the sleeves have marks or tears.” The wear, he adds, comes from records being “carried around the world, pulled in and out of record boxes night after night.”
That distinction gets to the heart of what Northern Exposure represented in the first place. In the mid-’90s, Sasha and Digweed were already coming off the success of Renaissance, at a moment when dance compilations were becoming increasingly crowded with collections of the biggest tracks of the moment. Northern Exposure was partly a reaction against that formula.
Their source material was eclectic and often geographically informed. Touring America exposed the pair to the breakbeat sounds coming out of Florida — Tampa, Orlando and Miami in particular — as well as music from the West Coast and San Francisco. Rather than simply documenting what was happening in clubs, they wanted to fold those sounds into something more immersive. “We wanted to take some of that music, alongside all these other strange and beautiful records we were finding, and somehow piece it together into one journey,” Sasha says. “A soundtrack. Something you could lose yourself in, disappear into.”
Among the records returning to the spotlight through the auction are some of the selections that became virtually inseparable from that journey: God Within’s “Raincry (Submerged),” Scott Hardkiss’ atmospheric contribution to the North disc; Rabbit in the Moon’s psychedelic “Out of Body Experience”; and Underworld’s “Dark & Long (Dark Train),” which brought the South disc to its memorable close.
There are also artifacts from the later Northern Exposure era, including Breeder’s “Tyrantanic,” which opens Expeditions, and Space Manoeuvres’ “Stage One.” One particularly revealing object is a 45-rpm 777 Productions acetate of Delerium’s “Silence (Sanctuary Dub),” complete with a handwritten label reading “Fade Remix (Dub 1)” — a reference to Chris Fortier’s Sanctuary alias — and a breakbeat version on the reverse.
Digweed’s own archival excavation produced another thrill: an acetate of “Dope on Plastic,” a particularly rare release that he hadn’t expected to encounter in his collection. But for him, the records aren’t merely objects of rarity. “Obviously the tracks off Northern Exposure have such strong memories for me,” he says. “They all take me to a very special place in my musical memories.”
Sasha describes the experience in similarly tactile terms. He has roughly 40,000 records and says only about 250 have been sold through his previous Amplifyd auctions, but revisiting the Northern Exposure material brought back memories that weren’t necessarily attached to the music itself. The sleeves, handwriting, stickers, battered covers and even the smell of an acetate could transport him back three decades. “It’s like opening an old box of photographs,” he says. “The memories just come flooding back.”
That connection, Sasha says, has also changed his understanding of why collectors might want these particular copies when the music itself can often still be found elsewhere. “What I hadn’t really considered was how much they meant to the people on the other side of the DJ booth,” he says. Fans know particular mixes and particular records from clubs, journeys, relationships and periods of their lives. Owning the copy that Sasha or Digweed actually used to construct one of those mixes creates a different kind of connection.
Digweed initially had mixed feelings about letting go of some of his prized possessions. But he ultimately came around to the idea that the records could continue their lives with listeners who understood their significance. “The fact that they want the vinyl so much means it must also have strong memories for them,” he says.
Running through Oct. 21, the auction arrives just days after Northern Exposure Redux, a remastered CD and vinyl reissue and deluxe box set released Sept. 25 through LateNightTales. Sasha and Digweed also continue to perform on a handful of occasions every year (they’ll visit Mexico City on Oct. 2 and Dallas the following day), while pursuing numerous solo endeavors. And where the reissue returns the music to circulation, the Amplifyd auction puts the physical history behind that music into the hands of collectors.
And 30 years on, Sasha still hopes the original journey can reach people who weren’t around when it began. Tthe fact that people are still talking about it and are excited about hearing it again 30 years later is really all we could have wanted.” Now, those individual pieces are beginning another journey.
