3 / 10
Oakey? Lovely geezer. Total professional. Taking rave culture to the masses. Open-minded, inclusive, lifting it to the next level. Phew! We've had some mad nights out, I can tell you. Just don't mention his massive fortune, his huge business empire, or drugs and you're laughing. Diamond.
Pity, then, that his music is so grindingly shit. If Oakenfold was the Bono of beats, a populist demagogue smuggling the occasional smart idea into the mainstream, then this soundtrack to the John Travolta-starring blockbuster techno-thriller Swordfish might be an interesting exercise in Hollywood subversion. But Oakey's not Bono - he's more like the Bon Jovi of trance, going through the mass-market motions with all the soul and adventure of an accountant. Which is why this record is packed to the Prada pockets with lowest common denominator pop-trance bilge that doesn't even sound good on expensive drugs.
Not only that, but Oakenfold ropes in some genuinely talented and interesting musicians - then remixes them into pop-trance bilge, too. The alpine peaks of Muse's prog-punk epic 'New Born' have been ironed out into geometrically flat Lincolnshire landscape. Even Afrika Bambaataa's landmark 'Planet Rock' gets the same watery sludge treatment - the revenge of the mediocre on the innovative.
Only a clueless, pop-hating studio executive could get remotely excited by this limp exercise in cross-demographic niche marketing. Pile it high, sell it cheap. But for fuck's sake don't listen to it. Geezer.
Stephen Dalton
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