Zone Magazine Issue 011 - Paul Oakenfold

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feature interview [ireland] I set off to Dublin on the eve of Friday 12th August for my arranged interview and meeting with Al Gibbs, chauffeured and supported by my wonderful partner, both of us avid fans of the named above so the excitement was rife in the car en-route. I had never been to the FM104 studios before. Upon entering the building I was overwhelmed and it felt so very surreal to be standing in such a place. Al greeted us and took us to the studio, his warmth was very much felt. As a fan for years, it was undoubtedly an unforgettable experience. His indentation within the music scene is of a colossal amount, responsible for injecting the highest forms of happiness to people all around every Friday evening. They tune in to basque in his exquisite tune selections and bubbly banter. His infectious, appealing and charismatic mannerism – how one voice can offer so much comfort, a haven almost for those that like to unwind, indulge or escape inside a few hours of aural heavenly bliss. He is both a remarkable artist and music enthusiast that shares even the most well hidden treasures to his listeners and followers, unwrapping their unquestionable beauty around the ears of the youths of today, gems as old as the stars, only few will truly acknowledge their rarity and divinity. The dance decade’s hour is a perfect opportunity to catch these gems. I mean how often would you get to hear the likes of ‘Jam and Spoon – Right in the Night’ or ‘Mory Kante – Yeke Yeke’! They blow over the airwaves with a chilling touch of nostalgia, enough to take you back to a dancefloor, a night of your life that you can never forget, rekindling an untouchable memory, impervious to time, as if it was yesterday. The first few beats in and you’re back there. Beads of sweat upon your forehead, a sea of flashing lights, darting lasers and simply just the faces of people that you never knew but were always there. That one tune blaring, tingling vibrations, never feeling so alive as you did then in the midst of a crowd of hundreds, all there for the music. Years on and that tune comes on, courtesy of Al Gibbs; you become possessed with an overwhelming feeling of euphoria and excitement, remembering that night of your life, a priceless, sensory thing, the immortal strength that music really has, the love it creates, an existence in which so many can relate – its connections and how it brings people together. I remember how opportunities to listen to each show in its entirety seldom occurred. Long trips meant full enjoyment. Driving home along a sunset coated sky, wipers speeding across the windscreen during a thundering winters night, the shimmer of Christmas lights whizzing past, friends, family, nights out, nights in - how we’ve travelled distances, ones we’ll always recall, and that one voice that carried us there, the big man, the freak himself, Al Gibbs. So basically he holds infamous stature and importance to many listeners around the country, particularly Leinster, but for me on a personal level, it was always a dream to interview, his being such an inspiring, influential person. I had the pleasure of attending the Button Factory three weeks ago for the launch of the ‘Freaks on Friday Hall of Fame’ with none other than Mauro Picotto. I don’t think I had ever looked so forward to a gig in all my life. Of course Al made sure that we were all geared up and ready to go, dropping teasers on air during the weeks building up to the gig. There I was, standing in the sold out venue, an absolute sweatbox to be completely honest, smiling clubbers all around me, hand in hand with my man, soaking in the hype and Mauro drops ‘Iguana’ as the final tune of the night. Well I’m sure I can speak on behalf of anyone else that was there when I say that it was nothing short of electric. that night will be imprinted in my mind for the rest of my days. Hats off!!!! I propped myself up into Jim Jim’s chair in the Strawberry Alarm Clock studio. I gasped as I took in my surroundings; bright red microphones scattered along the oval desk, famous names scribbled across the FM104 placards on the walls and Al himself sitting facing me. The pressing of the record button meant all systems go and the interview began. __________________________________________________________________________________ What’s your busiest day of the week? What does it typically entail? ‘A day in the life of Al Gibbs’… Obviously Friday is a very busy day. I do all sorts of stuff in the background of the radio station. I do some of their events, some of the marketing stuff during the week, also then I do their gigs, then I’m here and I produce the show. I don’t just go on air and press play at 7pm. We put it all together in the background. I leave the house traditionally around 8/9am, I get in here early and I would be working away flat out until lunchtime, then I try and get an hour off to go for a swim or something just to break up the day. Then back in here normally for 2/2.30pm and then work through just to sort the final preparations for the show, on air for 7pm, do the show live, 52 weeks of the year, there, there abouts, probably taking 2 – 3 shows off in the year. We used to record it but it’s actually more hassle to record it than it is to bring someone else in to present it, so one of the guys, Andy Preston covers it. After the show, I go off and do a gig, sometimes 2, I get around! But as a dj, you need to be working, you need to be gigging at the weekends. It would be easy just to do the radio show and go home, but I kind of find if you’re not gigging, you kind of lose touch with the music. I normally get home around 4/5am Saturday morning, they’re hectic hours but I’m still able to do it – so yep Friday is my busiest day definitely. How long have you been in the business? Where did it all begin? Tell us about life before Freaks on Friday. Ok so I’m djing since I was 15, I’m 39 now, and I’m turning 40 in January. We’re bringing the show to Ibiza at the end of the September and to also to celebrate my 40th! We’re going to be there for the official closing of Space, the official close down of the night-club itself. When I started going to Ibiza, with Space, it was kind of at it's absolute peak, in about 1998, so I just thought it would be a good way for me to sort of do my 40th. We’re not going to do Ibiza anymore with Freaks, we’ve kind of done it every year, it’s obviously a brilliant ending career story, but also for Ireland, it’s a good finishing point. After this Ibiza trip, there’ll be no more, we’re going to do Croatia or something like that. I’m DJ'ing a long time, 25 years. I’ve been professionally DJ'ing since I was 18, every night of my Leaving Certificate I had a gig, didn’t impress my folks as you can imagine, it’s been very good to me, it’s been a great career, it’s been a great experience. It’s been a part of me as much as anything in my life, it’s a huge part of me. Before I started djing on radio and working in the clubs, I was very much interested as a kid in the radio thing, and I remember watching a music video for ‘Snap – The Power’. There’s a DJ at the beginning of it, some Russian guy comes on and says something about Sputnik; there’s microphones and transmitters and stuff in the video and I was just switched on to it, I don’t know why but there was a calling there; so I followed that calling. I was very much involved in the pirate radio scene in Dublin, Pulse FM was the big one, DLR, all those type of stations; it was a hobby. I suppose it was like a wise man once said ‘If you can turn your hobby into a job, you’ll never work a day in your life’, and that is the truth. Did you ever imagine your idea would grow to be this huge? What’s the best feeling you get doing your job and what does your job mean to you? No I definitely never thought that I’d be doing this and that it would be a career. When you’re doing it for so long, you maybe take it for granted sometimes, and you get used to the good life and to the good sides of the life. There’s nothing like playing in a room with a thousand hands up in the air; just people losing their minds, even though it might become common place sometimes; there’s still going to be stand out moments in gigs where it makes it all worth while. You can go through spates, and I have gone through spates where you do a load of terrible gigs and you go this isn’t worth it anymore, I hate this; but if it’s what you want to do and it’s what you love, you just keep bashing on and well I’m still here I suppose! Name one difference you feel prevalent in the music scene today opposed to 15 years ago. How do you predict the scene to develop in years to come? There’s a huge difference between now and then, whatever about the scene, the scene just goes around in circles. It’s young people, discovering this new music, getting really excited about it, whatever genre or style it is, they party their little socks off for 5 or 10 years, they grow up and look back and think that that era was the best era that ever was and that’s happened and because I’m nearly 40 now, I’ve probably done that 3 times. The music is different now because it’s so disposable, I was only having this conversation today with someone else; when I was DJ'ing 20 years ago, you would buy a record, that record you could play for a year, a year and a half, now you download a track, you play it twice, and it’s forgotten about. The music is more disposable and that’s not a good thing, people have no value of music, it’s just a thing, back then it was a material; a piece of vinyl, cover art and it was a thing, a physical thing, now it’s a file sitting in a computer somewhere and I think that side of it, music has lost out but I suppose the upside of that is that there’s people making music, who are naturally good producers that would never have been heard of and now coming to the forefront because of technology the way it is, and I guess that would be the answer to that question! ________________________________________________________________________________ 28 ZONE-MAGAZINE.IE
" I’m DJ'ing a long time, 25 years. I’ve been professionally DJ'ing since I was 18, every night of my Leaving Certificate I had a gig, didn’t impress my folks as you can imagine! It’s been very good to me, it’s been a great career, it’s been a great experience. It’s been a part of me as much as anything in my life, it’s a huge part of me. " __________________________________________________________________________________ Who is your personal number one artist and why? That’s a tough question, it would change , I have to say on a weekly basis, who I think is brilliant, like what happens to me is I fall in love with music for a while, I fall in love with a particular piece of music, or a particular DJ or sound, and then after, it’s like anything, you get used to it, you’ve listened to it too many times, you get bored of it, so you push it on and move on to the next thing, so I don’t think I have an all time number one or an all time favourite, there’s certain djs that I love. I love Erick Morillo, LOVE Erick Morillo!!! Because when I was 20, he was the God at the time, he was playing Ministry of Sound, love Danny Tenagli, love Carl Cox, some of the newer guys, so big fan of Matador, big champion of Matador, so for me there isn’t a number one, there’s just lots of them! You’re stranded on a dessert island. The only possessions you have are a DC player and a one track CD. You don’t know how long you’re going to be stranded for so you’re going to need a tune that you never get tired of hearing. What would be your one tune and why? Probably Sasha – Xpander. I love Sasha – Xpander. I used to play it in the Redbox, in the glory days of Redbox on a Thursday night and we were doing maybe 1,800 people on a Thursday night, they were just coming for the music, it wasn’t like they were just going for a student night or turning up for cheap drink, they were coming just for the music. When I played that record, the place used to just erupt. It was a different kind, they weren’t punching the air, you could just tell that they loved it, they had love for this song, and he re-mastered it a couple of years ago and so I play it all the time, it’s just a great record, it’s really easy to listen to. When it comes to your preference in music, have you any guilty pleasures? Yes I do, I’m probably going to regret saying this but I actually really like listening to Justin Beiber (I ask him if he’s a Belieber, to which he replied no I’m not at all, he’s a little prick to be honest!!!!) I just think the production of his stuff is really good , it’s all Diplo and all the lads... Major Lazer. Yeah it’s just well produced music, when it comes on the radio, it does get turned up a little bit, but that’s my only guilty pleasure! Have you a shower anthem? A shower anthem…do you know what I don’t really listen to music in the shower. I suppose now that I’m that bit older, music has a sort of space in my life, where it used to be my whole life, I sort have that space because I’ve kids and wife, and a normal life outside of dance music. I go home and I still have to be a dad and still have to make dinner so no I don’t sing in the shower, I don’t really listen to music as much at home as I used to. I listen to music all day, I listen to it in my car all the time and when I’m away, but once I’m at home in the evening time, unless I’m producing music, I’m not really listening to music, honest answer! You’ve achieved so much to date, symbolic in so many respects to the nation. What’s in store for the future. Have you any further hopes and dreams? Emmm!, yeah I suppose I do, I’m producing a lot more than I was, I stopped producing because there was just so much music coming out, like I think Beatport uploads 20,000 songs a week, trying to get through or bash through that amount of music, I just went, there’s no point, the music isn’t even going to be heard, so I stopped producing for a while and now I’m back doing more. We’ve a song actually called ‘Ask me to dance’, it’s basically a monologue of old Dublin stories. We asked people to send in stuff, it’s a slow song, it’s not a club track, it’s a slow piece of, I don’t know what it is, people are having a word, kind of like their memories of Dublin, it’s really just for whatever reason taken off and everybody is asking for it, so that gives me hope that there is a way to get the music out to people. I just signed a record with Steve O to Toolrooms, that comes out in October, it’s called ‘Congestion’, it’s a techno track, I’ve never made techno before. So yeah, we went in and locked ourselves in a room and produced 10 tracks. This is the first one, it’s coming out on the Amsterdam compilation and then a full release later on in the year. __________________________________________________________________________________ ESSENTIALDANCEMUSIC 29
Page 1 and 2: ESSENTIAL DANCE MUSIC ISSUE 011 201
Page 3 and 4: ISSN 2009-8014 (Online) ISSN 2009-8
Page 5 and 6: Al Gibbs 28 Club & Event Reviews 20
Page 7 and 8: AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT 2016 New name
Page 9 and 10: Todd Terry launches his new imprint
Page 11 and 12: Free Sample Packs & Exclusive DJ Mi
Page 14 and 15: It’s been a long time since we la
Page 16 and 17: You have played all over the World
Page 18 and 19: feature Revealed Recordings With Ha
Page 20 and 21: festival review [netherlands] Lumin
Page 22 and 23: feature interview [uk] When iAIN TA
Page 24: Digital, CD's or Vinyl, and why? Al
Page 30: ___________________________________
Page 33 and 34: ___________________________________
Page 35 and 36: " The main reason we work with loca
Page 37 and 38: Pro Tools 12 (Mac/PC) Pro Tools has
Page 39 and 40: Day 3. I woke up on Monday afternoo
Page 42 and 43: festival review - uk A Soggy Sunday
Page 44 and 45: whats in your studio? Nutty T hails
Page 46 and 47: - Best Sets On The Net - Hugo Mc MC
Page 48 and 49: CHARTS - TOP 10'S July/Aug 2016 Hug
Page 50 and 51: MUSIC REVIEWS Danny Slade [UK] - Da
Page 52 and 53: MUSIC REVIEWS Louk [UK] - Hard Tech
Page 54 and 55: MUSIC REVIEWS Nutty T [UK] - Hard D
Page 56: 'REBIRTH' LEE WILLIAMS RETURNS TO E

Zone Magazine Issue 011 - Paul Oakenfold

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