Forget all that crap about club DJs being artists, because they're not. DJ Spooky (not a regular club DJ) has said that he doesn't like beat- matching because it's too elementary. It's sorta like riding a tricycle down the sidewalk after you've learned to bomb downhill on a full- suspension mountain bike. Many club DJs are more mathematicians than entertainers, let alone artists. But, just like that one crazy motherfucker who will bomb downhill on a tricycle, Sasha and John Digweed make beat- matching something completely unique. Heck, on their best nights, the Northern England trance duo make peers like Paul Van Dyk and Paul Oakenfold sound like hacks by comparison.

Over several Northern Exposure releases and tons of club residencies and one- offers, the duo have struck a balance between primal thumps and angelic sweeps, always choosing songs that bend into each other perfectly and lend personality to a genre that is often sacrificed to the beat. They've also mastered a noodlish technique of using computer software to deconstruct and merge songs in a live setting. I don't know how they do it, but the result sounds really cool.

On this, the first in a series of live sets from club DJs playing around the world (mixes from Sasha and Oakenfold have already been released in the UK and will hopefully be released soon in the U.S.), Digweed sheds his sometime partner and reveals himself to be the more tribal of the pair. These beats are massive, from the standard thump of Astral Matrix's "Towards Omega" to the hypnotic build of Fatima Morgana's "Apache Spur." The latter's breather- morph into Sound of Sim's "Rub-A-Dub" is the kind of thing that will get you sweating and smiling on the dance floor with or without illicit refreshments. Then again, so will the rest of the two- disc set.

Sydney doesn't have the same seamlessness as the best Northern Exposure sets, and Sasha's angelic touch would make for a good cool-off here and there, but Digweed makes up for the relentlessness by mixing burning trance with more recognizable fare like Paul Van Dyk's oft-used "Words" and a remix of the Crystal Method's ubiquitous "Keep Hope Alive." Sometimes that touch of familiarity is just what you need to keep you from losing all semblance of reality, which Digweed comes impeccably close to doing.

-Shan Fowler