Northern Exposure Redux vinyl: release date, formats & where to buy

Collector notes

The mix that DJ Mag hated and history vindicated Northern Exposure came out on 27th September 1996, mixed by Sasha and John Digweed at a point when neither of them had any interest in making a record that behaved like the DJ sets people expected from them. Where most mix albums of the era were straightforward club sequences, Northern Exposure was split into two very different moods across two discs: 0°/North, slow and ambient, built for the comedown rather than the peak; and 0°/South, darker and more physical, closer to what you'd actually hear them play out. Both mixes leaned hard on music Sasha and Digweed had picked up on early trips to America — tracks by acts like Rabbit In The Moon and The Future Sound Of London that most UK dancefloors hadn't caught up with yet. It did not go down well at the time. DJ Mag's review was blunt, and the ambient first disc in particular was singled out as a misstep — dull, indulgent, a long way from what people wanted from a Sasha & Digweed record. Thirty years later, that verdict reads as one of dance music journalism's more spectacular misses. Northern Exposure is now routinely named among the greatest DJ mix albums ever released, and its influence runs through two decades of concept mix series that followed it — Global Underground, Balance, DJ-Kicks and plenty of others owe something to the idea that a mix compilation could have a mood and a structure rather than just a tracklist. What's actually different about Redux This isn't a straight repress. Northern Exposure Redux remasters both original mixes for 2026 — the first time either has had proper attention since 1996 — and adds something that didn't exist on the original release at all: a third disc of newly recorded ambient and dub material, made by Sasha and Digweed specifically for this reissue rather than lifted from the archive. It's shaped by the spirit of dub producers like Bill Laswell and Mad Professor rather than trying to recreate the original's sound, and it's exclusive to the physical formats that include it — it won't turn up on streaming. One more change worth knowing about if you're a completist: the closing track on the South mix has been swapped. The original 1996 pressing closed with an Underworld mix; Redux replaces it with a newly recreated version of "Dark And Long (Dark Train)" put together by Darren Emerson himself, the former Underworld member. Late Night Tales hasn't given a detailed explanation for the change, but it's the one deliberate edit to the original tracklisting anywhere on this reissue, so if you're the kind of collector who cares about that sort of thing, it's worth knowing before you order rather than after. North or South — which one to buy first If you're buying the two mixes separately rather than as a set, it's worth knowing what you're actually choosing between, because they're not interchangeable halves of the same thing. North is the comedown record. Ambient, spacious, built to be played at low volume with the lights off — this is the disc DJ Mag disliked most in 1996 and the one that's aged the strangest and best. If you're drawn to the ambient and downtempo end of electronic music, or you want the disc that's genuinely unlike anything else in most collectors' racks, start here. South is the one that actually sounds like a Sasha & Digweed set — darker, more rhythmic, building toward something rather than drifting. It's the disc that closes with the new Darren Emerson track, so if the tracklist change matters to you, this is the pressing it affects. Most serious collectors will end up wanting both. If you can only stretch to one right now, let genre be your guide rather than which one has the "better" reputation — they're doing genuinely different jobs. Why this one's worth owning on vinyl specifically: Northern Exposure was never really a vinyl record the first time around — the original 1996 release was built around the CD format, and vinyl pressings of the era compressed a fourteen-track double mix down to fit the format's limits. Redux corrects that: both mixes are spread properly across coloured double LPs, mastered for vinyl rather than squeezed onto it as an afterthought. That's a genuinely different listening experience from the CD version, not just a different shaped object. The coloured pressings, midnight blue for North, sky blue for South, are visibly tied to each disc's mood, which is a nice touch and also means they'll likely be the first to sell through; coloured represses of anniversary reissues from established artists routinely go faster than the black vinyl equivalent, and at least one edition here has already sold out at other stockists ahead of release. If you want a specific colourway rather than whatever's left in six months, preordering now rather than waiting for release day is the safer move. Every vinyl edition includes a download code, so you're not choosing between "the version I can play in the car" and "the version that sounds good on a proper system" — you get both.