Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

Paul Oakenfold is one of the UK’s best when it comes to creating an assortment of dance, club, and trace music.  His style is often the soundtrack to many movies, raves, and his mixes are suitable for commercials, similar to how Moby has crossed over into virtually all multimedia areas.  This time out, Oakenfold treats his followers to double the fun on a two disc collection culling together his best scores, compositions, and dance grooves.

Oakenfold is known for taking other artists’ songs and completely transforming them into club favorites, which he does an amazing job borrowing from a variety of genres.  Take for instance his completely reworked versions of Dead Can Dance’s “Savean” and Led Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.”  The latter, in particular, was quite shocking to hear the first time.  Oakenfold tones down Robert Plant’s vocals and replaces them with a thumping bass, while minimizing the effects of Jimmy Page’s guitar work with piped in percussion and scratching.

The project continues with some of Oakenfold’s most prominent soundtrack scores, like “Tears In Rain,” and “Rachel’s Songs,” from the “Bladerunner” soundtrack, and “Sacrifice,” with vocals from Lisa Gerrad, from the “Insider” soundtrack.  Disc two closes out with an eleven minute remix of “The Silence of 2000,” which does a good job capitalizing and wrapping up on the heavy thumping beat theme of the disc, with vocals by Sarah McLachlan mixed in.

Despite Oakenfold’s brilliance in his craft, those that are not die-hard fans may find this project to be longwinded with beats sounding identical to one another.  If it wasn’t for the vocals mixed in throughout the album, it would sound like one big machine stuck on the same style for a few hours.  However, that mood is appreciated by fans of Oakenfold’s genre so they can keep on dancing and pick up on the patterns in each track.

Andy Argyrakis 1/7/2001