Paul Oakenfold – The Goa Mix

Had its 30th Birthday recently 🎂, (18th Dec 1994 Essential Mix BBC radio 1). I was fortunate enough to record it when broadcast. Loved it then, love it now.

Yes, quite a bit is not true Goa Trance, (etc), but, would a mix of just that worked, (at two hours long, with the different movie clips, etc, in the style idea that PO did it)? Naaah (well IMO anyway).

Yes, there is quite a lot of heavier large club tunes in there, but it works, and it was very well put together.
Yes it was somewhat mainstream driven, but it was also quite adventurous in other ways.

Cheers to PO for creating it. "HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY" 🙂

Uken unbelievable mix from go to wo if you can find it well worth the price one of oakys best

Still sounds fresh as f**k 23 years on! this alongside Dj Vertigos - "Better Days" 1992 mix and Sasha and Digweed Northern Exposure 1 have to be my top three mixes of all time, what makes this mix so special?...the breadth of sound is awesome, alright the goa boys slate it for not being "100% goa" which is fair cop, para-dizer - song of liberation is definitely trance! but you find yourself gliding in and out of various sounds, the mix just seems to flow without loosing momentum, this was a good advert for the perfecto stable introducing many who hadn't heard of producers like Martin Freeland, Matt Darey (before he produced cheese)...remember you had to buy your records from record shops in them days.
Why this mix stands out for me is the way oakey breaks the tracks up with those ambient, chillout numbers...vangelis, dead can dance, wojciech kilar etc they just tease you for next big track which is on the way, the dead can dance track still sends a chiver down my spine, must sound immense live, (like dilemma - in spirit, alot of people so im told have this played at their funeral) Im slightly ambivalent about them re-releasing this one on vinyl as it was such a rarity back then.
After 1994 alot of producers (especially trance producers) started to incorporate ambient breakdowns/passages in their tracks...chicane - saltwater, fridge - paradise, pulp victim - the world are just a few which spring to mind but there's loads more, perhaps inspired by this mix? who knows?
On release this mix received mixed receptions; some people view it as a compilation as oppose to a mix citing the lack of perceived mixing, and what some deem as oakey just fudging a load of his favourite tracks together which i thinks harsh. Others (like myself) see this as a stroke of genius, a soundscape of the best sounds the world had to offer in 1994, i know its a cliche but it really is timeless, great driving music.
I paid £12 for this cd in the 1990s, look at the prices now! madness...but it does what it says on the tin "a journey you have never experienced before"

The Cream release was before my time. Having thoroughly enjoyed for several years the original Goa Mix in it's less than CD quality bootleg mp3 form, I decided to purchase this 2011 version. I knew up front that it had additional tracks, but it didn't occur to me that Paul would have changed the entire mix. Disappointing. It's more than just a comparison between the two. The Goa Mix was a major milestone in Trance history. It's re-release should not have been tampered with to the degree that it was.

Given the choice, I'll be sticking with my my crappy 128 kbps version.

This double album is where trance music was born. This is the "official" version & comes without the Pete Tong voiceover & radio one jingles. Mighty hard to find but I got mine off E-bay for under £10, so there are some around The cover states " A journey you have never experienced before" He wasn't wrong. Buy at any cost..!

The best way to describe this mix is goa with trance sensibilities. And is exactly to the kind of people i would recommend it (trance lovers or someone who is starting with the genre).
Is not bad at all, i enjoyed it back then but is lightyears FAR AWAY from the true goa experience. Lots of the tunes dont even classify as that, which is fine.
This is kindergarden goa for the real thing listen xp voodoo trippy hippie.

This is to Goa what Mcdonalds is to food.

Is not mediocre,but you can get 100000000 better mixes for free on the net.
With the HUGE amount of good goa tunes the dj choose to pretty much make a remake of the same 1994 set!

What pains me is that this will sell much more than real goa artists just because of the fame.

Oakenfold got himself in bad situation if the original mix was so good, because it would be hard to top it. Maybe not as good as the original, but if it wasnt there I would hardly got to listen to neither new one nor original because I'm new around. So, at least, it had done something good. :)

At first I thought people were just being stuck up - OMG they dared edit this mix - blasphemy! - but it really was made worse. The addition of Infected Mushroom ruins the momentum, the mood, that they had spent so long building up. Southern Sun is a good song but doesn't belong in this mix.

They definitely did blow it. Please, Oakenfold, Perfecto, please re-release a re-mastered copy of the original.

I do agree with the jist of what previous reviewers have said about this.

However if we just take this 'as is' and not compare it to the '94 mix its actually OK, especially compared to alot of crap that comes out these days.

Theres some proper classics on here! Good for home listening anyway.

Goa purists might not dig this so much but if you are an oldskool trance lover with slightly eclectic tastes then you will probably enjoy this!