Tranceport

Oakenfold, Paul

album cover

Fasten Seat Belts, Get Ready For . . .

On Tranceport, British DJ Paul Oakenfold offers a high-revving tour through the techno offshoot known as "trance." The style is distinguished by what can seem like endless repetition—detractors say it's well suited to the mental reprogramming of those who've escaped the clutches of religious cults.

But as with other electronic dance subgenres, there's more to it. In the hands of a skilled practitioner, trance can be a totally absorbing sensory journey, with rippling waves of texture and ultrastreamlined grooves. Oakenfold starts with slivers of well-known European club hits, fractures them into cellular bits, and then methodically puts them together in novel ways. Once he's locked a few rhythm patterns into a loop, he'll add contrasting rhythms on top, building a tight, and dazzlingly interdependent, pulse that changes texture as elements are added and subtracted. Sometimes these beat constructions sound like they're coming from a tiny transistor radio speaker. Then, through the magic of sound-shaping effects, they'll swell up into an obliterating, almost symphonic roar.

As massaged and manipulated by a keenly musical DJ like Oakenfold, those extremes exert a hypnotic pull. Tranceport captures this, condensing the perpetual-motion club experience into a satisfying CD-length adventure. Though it's not the kind of art you typically learn about in a conservatory, there is, undeniably, art in its filter sweeps and cresting beats—the kind best experienced on a crowded dance floor, or in a fast car on an open highway at night, when the momentum of the music and the momentum of the machine become one.

Genre: Electronica
Released: 1998, Kinetic
Key Tracks: "Purple," "Café del Mar," "El Niño."
Catalog Choice: A Voyage into Trance; Creamfields.
Next Stop: Paul van Dyk: The Politics of Dancing
After That: Basement Jaxx: Remedy.
Book Pages: 558–559