Roger Sanchez

It's going to be a long Saturday night for New York house DJ Roger Sanchez. First he hits Cameo and then the infamous Space terrace for afterhours, beginning at 4:00 Sunday morning. And, mind you, all of this is on his plate 24 hours after finishing up at Voodoo in Mexico City. Somebody should give this guy an award or something.

It probably wouldn't fit in his trophy case, though. Over the dozen-odd years he has DJed, Sanchez has racked up props owing not only to a relentless work ethic, but also to his deep desire to connect with clubbers rather than simply blowing their minds with cool shit to dance to. One wouldn't expect a Grammy winner (for his 2004 remix of No Doubt's "Hella Good") to spend a good five minutes of a tune shooting the breeze about his personal tribulations, but he did just that in "Again," from his 2006 album Come with Me.

Oh, and we mustn't forget the Best Podcast Award he picked up at this year's Winter Music Conference, for his internationally renowned Release Yourself show, downloadable at www.releaseyourself.com. In mix-release news, Sanchez's Release Yourself Vol. 6 came out in June on his own Stealth Records imprint. A perfect indicator of its funky, deep-house contents is the cover art, which easily could have come from a Bee Gees disco slab from the Seventies.