Mr. Oizo
Moustache (Half A Scissor)

There are those albums so beautiful that you like them at first listen. Slowly, though, you lose interest. And then there are albums so bad that initially disgust you and then you start to like them. I'm talking, for example, about "Trout Mask Replica" by the Captain and "Uncle Meat" by the Mustached One. This album is also annoying. The rhythm is hard to follow, and the few seconds of danceable rhythms explode suddenly and splash everywhere in a myriad of sounds. This, my dear friends, is perhaps one of those records that we will truly understand only many years from now. The record company itself refused to release the album and called it unlistenable. However, this is a distinguished record and with each listen, it never ceases to amaze.

Forget about all those absurd classic and outdated ways of listening to pop music. To hell with the various Muse or Franz Ferdinand with their false, cheap experimentalism. This is true avant-garde music, music for the crazy and degenerate minds, like the producer of this madhouse for misunderstood dance songs, Mr. Oizo. A man who, after creating one of the most famous dance rhythms in the world, we're talking about "Flat Beat", and after making an album full of useless fillers, decided to completely change course with this album. 

It would be pointless to do a track-by-track (forgive the Anglicism, I detest it) of every single song; the album should be evaluated as a whole. However, some truly beautiful songs are not lacking, even if not in the traditional sense of the term. How can one not be fascinated by the first track "Nazis", an electro-dance military march that gets lost in describing a world made of war and ruins? Try to listen to it while watching a video of a Nazi army parade. You will be mesmerized.

Then follows "A Nun", an orgy of sounds and voices overlapping each other that, despite this, manage after several listens to even create a danceable rhythm. Intelligent Dance Music. How can one forget "CPU" with its endlessly repeated beat rearranged in a thousand ways through beats, burps, and technological tribal rhythms, reminding us of the ruins of an industrial society now dominated by computers? The track "Berleef" features a beat that repeats to exhaustion, almost as if to reduce the listener to a mushy pulp.

At this point, our poor ear demands rest. It can do so reaching halfway through "Half a Scissor" which, from its initial gloominess, brings out an incredibly danceable rhythm halfway through the song. We can then rest again with the catchy "Stunt", incidentally the only single extracted from this delirious album.

To be noted lastly but not least important is "Vagiclean" , a track that begins with a disorderly tribal rhythm that suddenly ends midway through the song. But do not despair (besides, you should be if you've reached the end of the album), after barely a minute of silence, it starts again. To me, this second part brings to mind a chainsaw raping a tree which finally climaxes painfully. And to you? 

The end of this album has come. However, quoting old Uncle Frank at the beginning of Sheik Yerbouti, I can only say to this album "Go ahead and turn around, I'm about to come inside you again!"      

(Be kind, it's my first review)