Music Reviews of Techno, Trance, Industrial, Electronica

Music Reviews of Techno, Trance, Jungle, Trip-Hop, Industrial, Electronica, IDM, House, Drum&Bass

Paul Oakenfold — A Lively Mind Buy it at Amazon

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Paul Oakenfold’s follow-up artist album, “A Lively Mind” is yet another album featuring a slew of famous guests and packed with dynamite rhythms and super slick production. Actress Brittany Murphy (“Sin City”, “8 Mile”) is the guest vocalist on the album opener in “Faster Kill Pussycat” and surprisingly she has a great voice, or perhaps the studio engineers elicited that voice with some more than meek tweaking. Oakenfold got his name first as world-renowned DJ and then as a producer/remixer. So we shouldn’t be too surprised that he enlisted the help of another world-renowned DJ in Grandmaster Flash on “Set It Off” for a hip-hop fused electronic pop anthem fueled by huge turntable scratching. Pharrell Williams is also featured on the album on “Sex N’ Money” backed with a filthy synth and thudding bass. Spitfire and Ryan Tedder are also featured on several tracks adding their unique talents. This album feels much more club-friendly than his last with some very huge four-to-the-floor anthems like “Amsterdam” with its spacey acid lines, big beats, and thunderous techno rhythms leading the way as well as “Praise the Lord” with its staccato techno beat, weird Christian religious samples, and Bonds-esque spy bass and “Save the Last Trance for Me” which like the title suggest follows a progressive trance anthem beat as it builds and builds into a sweaty club anthem. Oakenfold once again fires on a million cylinders with precision.

- J-Sin

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