samedi 6 Oct 2007, 2h09m

Album: Paul Oakenfold’s Creamfields
Label: Thrive Records
Genre: Progressive Trance
Released: 2004 - 10th August
Moe Rating: http://www.blag.thevalency.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/star.pnghttp://www.blag.thevalency.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/star.pnghttp://www.blag.thevalency.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/star.pnghttp://www.blag.thevalency.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/star.png

http://www.blag.thevalency.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/creamfields.png

What up, welcome to the review, in which my opinion is always right, and your opinion holds little to no merit in influencing any of my thoughts and/ or my life.

First off the ranks, we have trusty ol’ Paul Oakenfold’s Creamfields. Firstly, a bit of background. Creamfields is one of the largest dance events held in the UK, which first took place in 1998, which seems to be a pretty good starting time, as music started sounding half-decent at around that point in time. Prior to that, as everyone knows, all music was primarily rockabilly/ western affairs with a Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd album thrown in, just to mix it up a bit.

So basically, this album is Paul Oakenfold’s rendition of the music of the time period, that happened to be played at Creamfields when the album was released in mid-2004. I managed to snag this album a few months after it was released I think, I can’t be too sure, but who cares, it’s pretty much irrelevant anyway.

Upon aquiring this album, shoving it into my media player of choice, iTunes, I gave it a bit of a listen and thought, “This is a rather nifty little album here.”. All the songs, apparently, were produced by Paul Oakenfold. I didn’t think much of it, to be truthful I didn’t really know any better, or the particular styles that Oakenfold played, so I just assumed all tracks were by Paul Oakenfold.

Moe Side Note: At this stage of my life, I didn’t really care about having correct ID3 tags as much as I do now.

So, time ticked away and here I am now, reviewing the gem of an album, until I discovered that I’d been living a lie. When going through my music collection and fixing the inconsistancies, I discovered the shock truth. Not a single track on Paul Oakenfold’s Creamfields is produced by Paul Oakenfold. Oh Oakey, why.. why would you do this to me?!

So, after countless (roughly 8) minutes on the Creamfields page on Discogs, I’d fixed up all the tracks, tagged, arted (adding album art) and reconstructed the album in all its glory. In doing this, not only did I foil Oakenfold’s cunning scheme, I recognised a few great artists that have been mingling around with the other trancey albums in my library. These include Young Parisians, Pinkbox Special, Tilt, Elevation and J00f.

Overall, it features a few big-ish names with some calming tunes mixed together quite nicely by none other than our sly friend Oakenfold. Like most of your progressive trance, the majority of the songs contain a nice, smooth percussion line, nice synths, a piano or so thrown into the mix, and a simple melody repeated throughout the entire track. Most of the tracks feature some variety of pleasant female vocals too, some with voice-modifying vocoders, others without. The album has a relaxing, urban feel to it, and is an extremely calming/ chillout tracklist.