The Paul Oakenfold

Paul Oakenfold (born August 30, 1963 in Greenhithe, Kent England) is a record producer and one of the best-known Trance DJs worldwide.

History
In 1987, Oakenfold spent several months in Ibiza, Spain, where he fell in love with the dance club music (see 1987 in music). Using influences from Ibiza's sound, Italo disco, soul and house, Oakenfold produced Happy Mondays' Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches, followed by remixes for U2, Massive Attack, Arrested Development, The Cure, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Simply Red, New Order and The Shamen with production partner Steve Osborne under the collaborative name 'Perfecto'. Many of these remixes were released under his label Perfecto Records.

He first started playing in clubs as a teenager and soon built up a reputation as a top party DJ. However, it wasn't until the early 1990s when his name was associated with the DJ elite. The reason for this rise in public admiration was his adoption of a new breed of dance music called Trance, something he discovered on the beaches of Goa in India and fused with similar sounding European records to create his own distinct sound. He took this to the mainstream when in 1994 he created a two-hour set for BBC Radio 1's Essential Mix. This set became known as the Goa Mix and to this day is the most requested broadcast on the BBC radio network.

In 1997, Oakenfold mixed one disc of the double album Fantazia House Collection 6, a UK House music compilation series that had been massively successful at the time. He brought his distinctive style to the mix.

After a short spell as a member of the band Grace, Oakenfold became Cream's resident DJ from 1997 to 1999. During this time, he began to concentrate on the release of Tranceport in 1998. Oakenfold followed Tranceport with arguably his most successful album Perfecto Presents Another World which introduced millions to his mixing skills. His popularity across the Atlantic is slowly growing thanks to his work on the film soundtracks of Swordfish, The Matrix Reloaded, Collateral, Herbie Rides Again, Die Another Day, for which he remixed The James Bond Theme. He later worked on the James Bond video game, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, contributed to the soundtrack of the Japanese anime film "Appleseed" in 2004 and provided the theme song for the FIFA series of video games since 2005. He also contributes music to Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series of video games, particularly the versions for Microsoft's Xbox console.

In 2001 Paul took part in the first Area Festival tour. This tour featured Incubus, Carl Cox, Orb, OutKast, and The Roots.

In 2002, Q magazine named Oakenfold in their list of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die". In the same year, Oakenfold released his first solo album, called Bunkka featuring artists like Nelly Furtado, Tricky ("The Harder They Come"), the world-renowned Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan ("Zoo York"), Ice Cube ("Get Em Up"), and Shifty Shellshock, then the lead singer of Crazy Town ("Starry Eyed Surprise"). His latest effort is 2006's A Lively Mind.

In 2004, Oakenfold's song "Ready Steady Go" was reproduced with some Korean lyrics for the movie Collateral, and was included in the film soundtrack. "Ready Steady Go" was also used in Saab commercials, the EA Sports game Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003, the pilot for the television program Las Vegas, the film The Bourne Identity (during a car chase scene), NASCAR theme song for 2006, and the Alias episode "Snowman". In an earlier episode, The Imposter, of Radio Free Roscoe, a 2005 series on The-N, a character Travis Strong DJed to the song (obviously acting as if it were his own). It has more recently been used in the film adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's novel Stormbreaker. He's also tried his hand at acting by playing one of the zombies in the 2007 smash 28 Weeks Later.

'A Lively Mind' was released on June 6, 2006. The first single 'Faster Kill Pussycat' is a collaboration with the actress Brittany Murphy, and was released on May 2, 2006. Oakenfold's 2006 CD was released by Maverick Records.

Also, in 2006, to accompany the new Transformers movie, Oakenfold remixed the Transformers theme. He did want to sing but movie producers decided against it. [citation needed]

Oakenfold is a big fan of Chelsea F.C., but also likes Fulham F.C..

His name is also associated with a song called "see it", featured in the second stage of "Frequency", a game for the PS2. The game was released November 20, 2001, though the song itself is very inconspicuous and is rarely, if at all, mentioned of; it also does not seem to be on any of his albums.

It is also a little-known fact that he was an unnamed extra in Tim Burton's 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes