The arrival of Oliver Lang at the forefront of clubland has been as well-timed as one of his mixes. 2004 really has been Oliver’s year. He began the year being crowned a Mixmag Future Hero, the magazine remarking “Oliver’s funky house sets blew Ibiza away in summer 2003.” He returned to the island this season, his seventh in a row, once again supplying the soundtrack to the summer, spinning through clubs including El Divino, Amnesia, Bora Bora, Privilege and Eden. Oliver’s love for the White Isle is clear: “I’ll always go back, because it’s the dance music place in the summer,” he reports. The success of that summer created a springboard back to the UK – gigs at the massive SW4 festival, invitations to play Ministry of Sound, Turnmills and Godskitchen, all leading up to the Radio 1’s One Big Weekend, where Oliver DJd to 15,000 people alongside Deep Dish and Fatboy Slim. Aside from Ibiza he DJd to some 5000 in one month over two visits to Moscow, played Estonia, the White Party in Cologne and for Credence at the Miami Winter Music Conference. Not bad, considering he was looking after his own bookings. All he really needed was proper management to move him forwards, and he ends 2004 having signed to Serious Artist Management, home of only a handful of house DJs they have trusted to put on their books.
“Signing with a big agency is obviously very important,” he details. “I see this as a key time in my career. I’m in a very good position at the moment to take things further. It’s just a case of keeping the quality up and progressing.”
He has succeeded far beyond his years, which still only number 24. His arrival may seem smooth and seamless, but the reality is that he has been DJing for precisely half of those years, a precocious talent, brought up in an already musical household (his Dad played bass in 60’s pop band The Mindbenders). Oliver was playing in clubs at 14. He had a record released at 16. At 18 he had already packed his record box and moved to Ibiza. So, his success and popularity are by no means an overnight concern – Oliver has been working hard to be the DJ he is today… the DJ turning every promoter’s ear.
Clubland is a packed marketplace. Oliver marks himself out not only by the quality of his mixing, but because of the effort he puts into the selection and delivery of his music. He is renowned for re-editing tracks onto CD, to create completely new variations of music. And he is also known for the kind of chunky, tribally house music that recently grabbed the attention of David Vincent at Sankeys Soap who immediately offered him a gig. “I think you can have the records, but it’s the time you play the records, and the order you play them that counts,” he explains. “My sound is definitely more mature than three or four years ago. I think my ear has become a lot more critical - I can stand back and listen to a tune and know whether it’s going to work.” Oliver Lang is a connoisseur of the art of DJing - a fan, as well as a practitioner. The effort and devotion he has put in is now paying dividends – he can let Serious do the bookings, and let his music do the talking, giving him the much needed time to really concentrate on rocking every party he plays: “I go absolutely crazy with the crowd when I’m playing,” he enthuses. “I don’t want to look like I’m too special to be dancing. I’m doing this because I love it and I want everyone to be able to see just that.”
The years of lugging record boxes around clubs; of knocking back gigs because he was underage (he once turned down a summer at Pacha in Denia because he was only on holiday and had to go back to school); of knocking on doors until his knuckles were raw… all that has now paid off. He started 2004 as a Future Hero. He ends it as a hero of today: “I can see the next step and it’s not far away - radio play, bigger clubs, better quality gigs and productions aplenty – all those things are in the pipeline. I think 2005 is going to be the most important one for me. I’m pretty much on course. I don’t know whether it’s luck, because I think you make our own luck. But I feel happy to be where I’m at.”
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