(London, UK) - Sasha, known and respected as a very keen vinyl mixer in the past, was among the first to embrace Ableton Live for his DJ-sets, and he was smart enough to market it well. Ever since, Sasha leaves his records at home, and instead brings his iMac with his tailored midi controller the Maven.

Although at the time, Sasha kept details to himself and photo's were scarce (as he had reportedly shelled out a serious amount of cash to develop the device), rumor has it that Maven is coming the global market somewhere next year. Is Sasha secretly working on the maven 2, whilst earning back some of the undoubtedly hefty investment in the initial device? Will people believe that their sets will improve while implementing Sasha's device? No clues here, but fact is that the man like himself hinted at a release at the beginning of the coming year.

Although we only have a picture to work with here, it looks like the controller is one of the most 'DJ mixer' like setups we have seen thus far. Apart from its somewhat Pioneer-esque look and feel, there are pre-labeled controls for sample triggers, of course 3 band eq, double send faders and long normal volume faders. One drawback, whereas maven 1 was built like a tank, with alluring metal knobs, led galore and custom crafted aluminium shields that protected it from the side, some people have argued that the retail version reminds them of Fischer Price. Nevertheless, we like the idea; coupled with his new Emfire digi-label, Sasha seems well underway to make an impact in 2008 yet again.