Paul Oakenfold is one of the most influential figures within dance music. He's also one of the most controversial. One of the scene's longest serving members, he has enjoyed a multitude of super-cool successes, such as being one of the first people to introduce acid house to the UK, remixing Massive Attack and Snoop Doggy Dog, A & Ring for Def Jam and Champion (he signed Will Smith and Salt & Pepa) and producing the Happy Monday's 'Pills Thrills And Bellyaches' LP.
The last few years have seen him champion the trance sound vehemently via his DJ sets and his Perfecto and Flouro imprints, a move that has subsequently lost him any 'cool' status amongst the music purist fraternity, but sealed his premier status in the world of mainstream dance music.
In a world where DJs produce albums after only a couple of years in the limelight, it's somewhat surprising that this is Oakenfold's debut long player. In any case it has been a long time coming, with expectations even higher following his recent soundtrack work for John Travolta's Swordfish movie.
The first surprise is how little four to the floor trance is featured here.
His time spent in LA seems to have had a significant effect on 'Bunkka'. Although created mostly in Bath ('Bunkka' is the name of the studio he used, rumoured to belong to Peter Gabriel), you get the feeling that this album was created to break into a burgeoning American market rather than a saturated European one.
The most common kind of rhythms are breakbeats, in downtempo, hip hop and mid-tempo formats. This pleasant variety of beats is merged with a fair range of sounds, from polished, feel good hip hop, raging energetic floor-busters, supine cinematics and the obligatory arpeggiated trance riffs.
Debut single 'Ready Steady Go' (featuring So Solid Crew's Asher D and soundjng like a Chemicals/Prodigy track from 1995) opens the album and seems to prepare us for a bombastic onslaught. But what follows is surprisingly restrained as crowd pleasing euphoria takes a back seat for deeper, less immediate and more textured sounds.
Oakenfold's emphasis, we soon realise, is on songs. Not just any old songs, but songs with undisguised accessibility, aka mainstream pop.
Helping the shiny vibe is the clean, polished production and the bias towards epic, filmic sounds and subtle but persistent trance inflections.
There are some talented new singers featured on the album in the shape of Emiliana Torrini, Tif Lacey and Carla Warner, but the world's number one DJ wasn't only gonna' have unknowns gracing his first album. Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell appears on the catchy and grating 'Time Of Your Life'. Hunter S Thompson recites some spoken word on the meandering 'Nixon's Spirit'. None other than original NWA star Ice Cube raps over the lame beats on 'Get Em Up', while Tricky and Nelly Furtado feature on the final and perhaps best track 'The Harder They Come'. Two of the albums most skin-crawling moments, 'Motion' and 'Starry Eyed Surprise' feature Grant Lee Philips (from LA rock band Grant Lee Buffalo) and Shifty Shellshock respectively.
To its merit, 'Bunkka' has a vaguely ambitious feel about it, and it's not as bad as it could have been (there's no pumping Euro-Cheese for example). But why do big name artists feel they have to make music that matches their status? This is the albums key downfall, because it's too polished, too epic, too indulgent. Too much style, not enough substance.
It has some interesting soundtrack moments but that doesn't make it a good dance album. It makes it, at best, a mainstream pop album with lots of strings and no balls.
