Paul Oakenfold Interrupted My Pint to Talk 25 Years of Perfecto

It’s a Friday evening and I’m sat in my favourite pub with a friend I haven’t seen for a while, waiting for a plate of cheap fish and chips to arrive. An hour ago I was at work trying to speak to one of the biggest DJs in the world. He’d unexpectedly been called into meetings and it looked like we were going to have to reschedule. So I hopped on a train and met said friend in said pub. Just as my battered cod arrived, just as I’d held my second pint to my lips, I got an email from said DJ. He was free to speak now, he said, and he was sorry to bother me late in the evening, but would I mind giving him a call now? I put down my knife and fork, dipped a chip in tartar sauce and dialled Paul Oakenfold’s phone number. Oakenfold answers from his LA base. We’ve got fifteen minutes to chat. In fifteen minutes I could hoover down my microwaved meal, demolish a well earned pint, and set the world to rights, so this had better be good.

“Hi Paul, it’s a bit loud here I’m afraid. I’m in the pub, sorry.”
“You’re in the pub?”
“Yeah, I’m in the pub. Anyway, my first question…”

Videos by VICE

Oakenfold is a lot of things: the man who brought Balearic to Britain, kickstarter of the acid house movement, superstar DJ, Crazy Town collaborator and label owner. Oakenfold inadvertently interrupted my pint to talk about his imprint, Perfecto, hitting that big 25th birthday. As someone who’s recently turned 25 I felt like I understood how pivotal that milestone is. You’ve knocked about for a quarter of a century by now, you should have either made a mark or seriously thought about how best to. Oakenfold is celebrating the anniversary by releasing 25 Years of Perfecto Records a compilation that takes in everyone from CeCe Peniston to Paul van Dyk.

Having released records over the years by the heavyweight likes of Robert Owens, Timo Maas, Fabio & Grooverider and Carl Cox, the label’s place in the annals of dance history has been assured. Their very first release was “Stories” by Izit, a laidback slab of premium blend Balearic that’s still as laundry-fresh now as it was then in 1989. Given that he smuggled it in from Ibiza, and that we’re still not really sure how best to actually codify the genre, it made sense to ask Oakenfold what it meant to him. “Easy — it was the music that Alfredo was playing. It could have been anything. House, techno, rock, he played it all. And so did we. That’s true Balearic.” That freewheeling spirit is best demonstrated in this mix from one of his legendary Spectrum nights — parties that explored the relationship between sonic possibility and the pleasures of ecstasy.

A few minutes in already, I decide to zip forward in time to a period that’s been mined pretty extensively in recent years: the mid-90s. Oakenfold told me he hadn’t paid “any attention at all, really,” to the glut of Korg M1 assisted Strictly Rhythm rip-offs churned out by youngsters who thought Bicep invented piano house in 2012. Which is a shame, because I was kind of hoping that he’d spend the final eleven minutes of our chat laying into twenty year olds. As someone who owns a few Nu Groove records — and thus really knows his shit — I was ready to butt in with a few well placed jeers. Alas it wasn’t to be. Instead he wanted to speak positively about the tune he rates as Perfecto’s most pertinent part of the 90s house canon, Grace’s seminal “Not Over Yet” — a hauntingly melancholic rush of endorphin-dripping peak-time mayhem, one of those tunes that’ll always sound good, be it at 2am on an Ibizan terrace or 2pm in a traffic jam on the outskirts of Ipswich. “I’m still playing that one out even now, actually. Did you know I made that record?” I didn’t actually, no, sorry Paul. Nice work, though.

As I peered at my watch and looked up at my pal stuffing his face with chips — really good looking chips — conversation turned from the pre-Windows 95 period to the heady days of the superstar DJ. Despite being one of the most successful in history, Oakenfold insists he never liked the term. “That was a media invention. I never called myself a superstar DJ. I just focused on doing what I was good at. Which was DJing. I took no real notice of that kind of stuff. I’m not saying I ever read anything about myself, but I made sure I only looked at half of the stuff out there. I need creative space and I always want to head in new directions to challenge myself.”

When asked about how one stays creative after 25 years in the game, Oakenfold got a little cagey. “What inspires you, mate?” he asked me. I licked the pint-foam off my lips and had a quiet ponder. I had no answer for him. “Exactly — it’s just there in you and comes from what’s around you.” Paul, and I think of him now as Paul, asked me to email him later that evening with my list of life inspirations. I’m sorry to say that I forgot to and ended up eating a kebab in bed instead. Maybe that’s how he’s stayed at the top of his game for so long while I sit with chicken juice dribbling down my chin.

With our time rapidly running out, Oakenfold wanted to take a minute or two to talk trance. Trance was never really cool and seems to only be only really appreciated by provincial teenagers and sweaty Dutch blokes. “I didn’t care that it wasn’t cool, it’s not for me to get what’s cool or not. All I know is that I like melody and emotion, melody and euphoria. That’s what trance has got.” Alongside “Bullet in the Gun” by his own Planet Perfecto production unit — a certified leisure centre classic — he rates “ResuRection” by Russian cosmonauts PPK, a track that originally appeared on MP3.com as a free, label-less download, as the most important contribution he and the imprint made to the history of trance.

He’s justifiably content with how things have panned out for the label. “Perfecto is my pride and love. Our radio show has 22m listeners, we’ve sold 10m records, we’ve signed great artists and great staff. It’s been tough at times, but this is my passion.”

As our beer started to turn, and our time with Paul was seconds away from being up, we decided to stroll back into the past. Given that acid house seems to be on everyone’s lips at the moment, it felt only right to ask one of the men who made that cultural shift here in the UK feasible what he thought about the likes of Seth Troxler deciding to bring the sound, and hopefully the smiley faced acid attitude, back. “Seth is a great DJ and I’m sure it’ll be great but we started it. We broke it. We were in the moment. Will I be coming over for Acid Future? Tell you what, send me that list of inspirations and I might fly over for a pub crawl with you before Seth plays. How does that sound?”

Pretty good, Paul. Pretty good. The phone rings off. I pick up a chip. It’s cold. I eat it anyway.

25 Years of Perfecto Records is out now. Head here to buy it.

Follow Paul Oakenfold on Facebook // SoundCloud // Twitter

Josh Baines is on Twitter