Mr Oizo – Pourriture EP

Mr Oizo - Pourriture EP

Okay, let’s get the obvious point out of the way first. Yes, this is the same Mr Oizo who made ‘Flat Beat’, 1999′s premier meme which gave the world Flat Eric, possibly the best yellow puppet since Sooty. I’m not ashamed to say that I absolutely loved the song at the time, and it was one of the first singles I ever bought. What’s truly surprisingly, therefore, is how good Mr Oizo’s recent output sounds, especially when so many other things I enjoyed in my youth have turned out to be pretty shit in retrospect.

Pourriture bills itself as an EP, but really feels more like something between a single and a sampler for the latest album, last year’s Lambs Anger: the title track is from the album, three other album tracks appear as remixes, and there are two short tracks of pointless filler noise.

Generally, it’s all good stuff, though. To get another obvious point out of the way, it’s clear that Quentin Dupieux (for that is his name) owes a fairly substantial debt to fellow French-house artists Daft Punk and Justice – you can hear the influence of the latter’s ‘Waters of Nazareth’ in the twisted lead rhythm of the title track, although the operatic vocal sample is a nice, original touch. Of the other proper songs on the EP there’s the menacing, spoken-word  ‘Lars Von Sen’, of which perhaps more could’ve been made, ‘Steroids’, on which fellow Parisian Uffie‘s vocals add their usual filthy charm, and what is perhaps the best track here, the straight-ahead dancey goodness of ‘Erreur Jean’.

The stuff on Pourriture isn’t life-changing or revolutionary in any way, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my 13 year-old self‘s musical taste wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Plus you could quite easily get your groove on to it, and that’s certainly no bad thing.

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