To sum it up, Paul is a living legend, one of those pioneers who saw the potential of dance music from the very beginning, to be essential, an escape, revolutionary.
“Who’s Paul Oakenfold?” If you just asked this question in your head, then I would be tempted to ask right back “Where the bloody hell have you been??!!” So lengthy and impressive is his biography that it’s hard to do justice quickly, but needless to say he was there at the very beginning when the kids were wearing pom pom skirts, lots of neon and experimenting with some very extravagant facial make-up (yes boys I’m talking about you) and now, all these years later, after a biography and a Greatest Hits Album, he’s still playing BIG sets to huge crowds. To sum it up, Paul is a living legend, one of those pioneers who saw the potential of dance music from the very beginning, to be essential, an escape, revolutionary.
During those heady days of the early 80s, a young Oakenfold was in New York, getting inspired and excited by this city bursting with musical invention. Hip-hop was the freshest street sound, but it was the compelling, infectious and infant sound of the underground that caught his attention. Arguable the first ever super-star DJ, Larry Levan was packing out the Paradise Garage every week with his hypnotic mixing style that would later become the acid house DJs stock in trade. A year later Paul followed the sound to Ibiza, and from the starry skies of open-air nightclub Amnesia, Paul returned to the UK determined to bring this same magic to the bus shelters and warehouses of 80s Britain.
So began a career that has never stopped forging the way for new music, from the early days DJing at Acid House nights Phuture and Spectrum, to the iconic Radio 1 Goa Mix, still broadcast on their network to this day.
After this first real showcase of what Paul Oakenfold could do, it would be two albums before his most successful album, Perfecto Presents Another World landed, but from the beginning, Paul had always been busy producing and remixing tracks for others, including ‘Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches’ by the Happy Mondays and at the other extreme Transformers by Cybertron, a soundtrack not only reflecting the direction his career has taken in recent years, but also his 100th remix.