Paul Oakenfold calls his new album Shine On “more of a score than a dance record,” which is a very polite way of saying he made a Paul Oakenfold movie and forgot to film it. “It’s very cinematic,” he shrugs. “I finished it during COVID. Locked myself in, thought about where I was in my life, musically, what inspired me. It came out the other end more of a score than a dance record.” He grins. Mission statement, met.
It opens with “Zanzibar,” a mood-board masquerading as an overture: dunes, shadows, someone’s possibly armed. “I once wrote ‘Ready Steady Go’ for a trailer of a movie that didn’t exist,” he says. “This time I wanted something moody, dark, dangerous. Write a track for a film that isn’t there.” The geography is deliberate. “I was in Marrakech, hanging with musicians, listening. I wanted ethnic sounds,” he says. “Years later I thought—this sounds like it could be called ‘Zanzibar.’ Close your eyes, it should take you somewhere.”
Oakenfold’s always believed dance music doesn’t need permission from the bouncer. He remembers playing Glastonbury’s main stage while techs for the rock band after him clattered drums behind a closed curtain. “There wasn’t respect,” he says. “I produce my own music, I’ve produced Madonna and Cher, toured with U2 and Chili Peppers—music doesn’t live in a nightclub. Music is for the world to share.” So if Area 51 calls? “I’ll go,” he says. Of course he will.
The album’s front half slides from instrumentals into proper songs—actual songwriting. “Programming an album is very important to me,” he says. “It should be a journey you can take in the car, at home with headphones, even doing the ironing.” On “Get To You,” the journey goes widescreen: an unknown Vancouver session singer up front, Harry Gregson-Williams conducting 75 pieces of orchestra, and one of the engineers from Bond’s Adele/Sam Smith era on the mix. Oakenfold cackles: “There’s very little of me on that record, actually. I did the demo, got it vocaled, handed it over, got strings, got someone else to mix it. If you blink, you’ll miss me.”
He’s not shy about rearranging his history either. “Touch Me,” first reborn on 2014’s Transmission, returns as a neon slow-burn meant for beaches and late-night cityscapes. “When I had my residency at Pacha, I was the only DJ with the original,” he says. “I knew the singer, Cassandra. I said, ‘This has never been done cinematic down-tempo—something where you’re on the beach with a cocktail, or you know the song and go, ‘fuck, I’ve never heard this before.’ Otherwise there’s no point in doing it.”
Then the floor tilts. “All I Want” is the lever that cranks the tempo and flips the album’s second half. “Melodic, uplifting, makes you feel good,” he says. The track also nearly killed your faithful interviewer, who admits he almost ate tile in the shower because of it. Oakenfold, ever the gentleman: “So you’re naked, showering, lathering up…and you want me to imagine that?” Beat. “I think I’m going to quit after this interview.”
Most of Shine On was tracked the old way: bodies, microphones, a room. “Ninety percent of the recording has been in the room with the singer and songwriter,” he says. “During COVID I cleaned up mixes, focused on them. But the takes—those are people in a room.” He still prefers it. “Next Monday I’ve got a session with two of my favorite singer-songwriters—Baby and Velvet Cash. I’ve figured out the direction, the chorus. They’re much better songwriters than me,” he says, perversely proud. “If we get it right, it could be a really cool record.”
He’s shrewd about context, too. This year he’s the opener on that dream bill—Pet Shop Boys and New Order—where nostalgia isn’t a side dish; it’s the entrée. Oakenfold knows the assignment. “Let’s be honest, it’s their tour,” he says. “There’s no point me going in and playing underground dance to a 50-year-old. My job is to get the crowd going.” So he’s programming a celebration, not a set list. “I’m going to play the hits of the ’80s. Sing-along anthems—music I grew up on and love. Human League, ‘Don’t You Want Me,’ ‘Dancing Queen,’ Pink Floyd. Straight to the point. Everyone gets in the mood, everyone enjoys the night. I’ll have a great time.” If you want the new and gnarlier stuff, there are after-parties. “That’s your real all-new, underground, cutting-edge music,” he says. “There you go.”
There’s plenty beyond the road: a second autobiography (“coming in June”), a dance-music documentary he’s scoring, and a Perfecto Records anniversary doc. The 20th birthday party for Bunkka? Delayed, for now. “We lost two years,” he says. “A lot of things are stacking up. I’ve already got seven new tracks ready, not even on this album.” The engine doesn’t idle.
Ask him about Bunkka and he lights up anyway—especially “Nixon’s Spirit,” his night-shift séance with Louisville’s own Hunter S. Thompson. “In the UK back then, his quotes were everywhere—bottom of every club flyer,” Oakenfold says. “I reached out. His wife knew my work; he didn’t. First night I recorded six hours—nothing I could use. Second night I honed him in on the American Dream. What was Nixon’s trial about? What do you think about the spirit of what he was trying to say?” At 5 a.m., fueled and feral, Hunter growled it into existence. “You may not understand everything he’s saying,” Oakenfold says, “but it captured the spirit and the moment of one of the greatest writers ever.”
That’s Shine On in a sentence: spirit and moment, bottled by a lifer who still likes taking big swings—film scores without films, pop songs with Bond mixers, Ibiza classics turned beach-noir lullabies, and arena warm-ups that weaponize joy. He’ll play the hits when the night calls for it and bury you in deep cuts after midnight. Either way, he’s programming the movie in your head. Try not to slip.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
