Post-Digweed
During the latter half of 2002, Sasha collaborated with big beat artist Junkie XL on the single "Breezer". Junkie XL, along with Charlie May, also assisted Sasha on his second album of original material, Airdrawndagger. Airdrawndagger took several years to produce due to Sasha's desire for the album to be "as near to perfection as possible." That March, Sasha suffered a perforated eardrum in a traffic accident, further delaying the album's production. Though the accident temporarily impaired his hearing, he drew inspiration for the album from his ordeal. Airdrawndagger was finally released, in August 2002, to much fanfare. However, the album was "received with a lot of head scratching", according to Sasha, which he attributed to its unexpected mix of genres. The album did not feature the heavier "club sound" of Sasha's previous mix albums, bearing a closer resemblance to ambient music. Airdrawndagger generally received favorable reviews, though critics noted that it was not as consistent and well produced as his DJ mixes. Sasha himself described it as "a selfish, slightly self-indulgent record", though he maintains that he is "happy with it to this day". Some critics, however, called it "sleepy"; E!Online described it as being "more in league with Yanni than Moby". To encourage listeners' interest, Sasha held an amateur remix contest for the album's first single, "Wavy Gravy". Due to the contest's success, Sasha released all the tracks from Airdrawndagger on his website, so that fans could download and create their own versions.
After the release of Airdrawndagger, Sasha took the young DJ James Zabiela "under his wing". He introduced Zabiela to the CDJ1000 turntable, and signed Zabiela to the Excession talent agency. The two toured the United States together, which extended Sasha's influence to already-popular American DJs such as Kimball Collins.
In 2004, Sasha signed with Global Underground to produce another mix album. However, he found the process of creating a standard mix album unrewarding, and decided to apply his production and DJing skills to a mix compilation that resembled a "real" album—that is, one featuring original material. Sasha's next studio album, Involver, was "a fusion of mix album and production record", consisting entirely of Sasha's reworkings of tracks by other artists. "I tried to take all the separate sounds to all the tracks ", he later explained, "and it allowed me to mix the tracks together on a much deeper level." He accomplished this by sequencing the album using Ableton Live and Logic Pro. Ableton Live is a music loop-based software package that Sasha uses to engineer tracks in real-time, whereas he used Logic Pro primarily for premeditated edits to audio tracks.
In 2005, Sasha produced his next mix album, Fundacion NYC, based on his nights DJing in New York at the Crobar club. Fundacion NYC received positive reviews for its originality, though JIVE Magazine found it "too complicated for the ear". Sasha is pleased with the album, and plans to make a series of Fundacion albums. The next year, Sasha released 10,000 copies of a June 2006 DJ set for sale using Instant Live, making him the first DJ to use Instant Live's licensing and publishing services. In August 2007, Sasha announced the formation of his record label, Emfire, which will be the exclusive outlet for his new material in both vinyl and digital formats. Its first release was"COMA", a collaborative track by a group of the same name which features Sasha, Barry Jamieson, Charlie May, and Duncan Forbes. While continuing to regularly DJ, Sasha began work on another Involver mix and the next Fundacion mix. Sasha's Invol2ver was released in September 2008.
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