Paul Oakenfold treated the crowd on Monday night at Ampersand to a DJ set of the epic trance he helped popularize.
He came into the DJ booth at 12:30 a.m. and spinned two hours of uplifting and euphoric dance music. The dance floor was completely packed all night, but he kept cheesy pop-dance from his albums off the turntables and smartly stuck to spinning the soaring trance that has made him a superstar DJ.
Many dance music critics say he has become too pop. However, he still knows how to get a crowd moving like very few DJs with flawless mixing all evening.
Oakenfold didn’t speak to the crowd – he didn’t need to. He let the emotional peaks and valleys of his track selection speak for him as he grooved along to the records he played all night.
With each new track dropped, the rabid crowd roared with approval. He closed out the night in dramatic fashion with one of his best dance anthems, the beautiful “Southern Sun” and a remix of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “The Other Side.”