Clubbers: Paul Oakenfold the big draw at Cyprus Avenue this weekend

Someone once said that there are two times when you play Cork: when you’re on your way up, and when you are on your way down. In all In Da Club’s years observing gigs in Cork it’s proved an uncanny rule of thumb. So, when Paul Oakenfold, the ultimate superstar DJ, a disc jockey who for 30 years made stadiums his home, and who has been the remixer of choice for Madonna and U2, was booked into little old Cyprus Avenue in April 2023, I thought… well, I thought fair play to him for playing a regional venue of this capacity. It’s not like he had to. And the opportunity to see a DJ of such stature in such intimate surroundings (and for a modest €25) was not something you’d come across too often.

One could easily forget that before the remixes for crazy money, being U2’s touring DJ and paving the way for the likes of David Guetta, Oakenfold was actually quite hip, once upon a time. This was back in 1989/’90 in the wake of the Second Summer of Love, when the UK acid house, rave scene emerged and as the indie-dance crossover began to explode.

In the late ’80s, Oakenfold was involved in the music business as an A&R man, signing DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and acting as the British agent for the Beastie Boys and Run-D.M.C. The moment that would propel him towards his destiny occurred when he visited Ibiza in 1987 along with DJs like Nicky Holloway and Danny Rampling, who became known as the ‘Ibiza Four’, as they were the British DJs who brought the Balearic sound which was being played on the party island back to the UK. In 1989 he founded what would become his Perfecto empire; his label, Perfecto Records, and the Perfecto remix unit which comprised Oakenfold and record producer Steve Osborne. By the end of that year he had established his name as a remixer alongside Andrew Weatherall, when the pair worked on the Club Mix of Happy Mondays’ Hallelujah. The single, taken from the Madchester Rave-On EP, had placed Manchester firmly on the cultural map as the Happy Mondays enjoyed simultaneous chart success with The Stone Roses. Indie-dance and remixes were suddenly hip.

While his accomplice on that record, Weatherall, would become a revered figure of musical integrity, Oakenfold took on remixes from all comers, helping the previously underground act The Shamen become an all-conquering dance music act, helping make U2 hip, while working alongside the likes of Judge Jules, Pete Tong and John Digweed to make progressive house and trance the lingua franca dance music, and whose legacy is the entity known as EDM in the United States and Eurotrance.

Oakenfold has sold truckloads of mix albums, including Ministry of Sound Sessions, Global Underground, and Essential Mixes. He is so much of this era – a DJ Magazine award winner in 1998 and 1999 – he hasn’t really left us. Those sounds still pervade, and it may be why he has recently released Mission Underground, a collection of old classics such as Sneijder’s Bullet in the Gun and Binary Finery’s 1998 remixed in a tech trance style alongside new collaborations with the likes of Markus Schulz to represent where Perfecto is today.

Paul Oakenfold plays Cyprus Avenue on Friday 25th. Doors 11pm. €30 (which is €5 more expensive than his last visit, so I guess he really must be on his way back up).