My first reaction when listening to the new album by French veteran Quentin Dupieux AKA Mr. Oizo, was to laugh. It has to be said, this is something I often do when listening to music, but it’s often because the music has elements in the sound design that make me crack up. Fake Blood’s “Mars” is a recent example – a song with a gurning bassline that becomes even more hilarious when interspersed with the odd sound effect that sounds like a microwave signalling the end of its cooking cycle. In this track, as with so many others of its type, I never get the sense that my laughter is intended, rather, it is because my musical sensibilities have programmed me to repel such production values.

This is not to say I don’t like Fake Blood, but Fake Blood is an example of the best of a genre that relies on producers constatly outdoing each other with the most ludicrous sound effects they can possibly muster.  The current wave of wobbly electro always reminds me of Mr. Oizo’s 1999 single “Flat Beat”, which probably passed many people by as a bit of a novelty hit, made even more so by the Levis ad which it soundtracked, and the puppet Flat Eric which was a more recognisable name than Mr. Oizo. The album, which features Flat Eric on the cover in the famous razor scene from French surrealist classic “Un Chien Andalou”, along with a minute long track in which Flat Eric is let out the cupboard and then berated suggests that Dupieux has a difficult relationship with the character.

I don’t know how much Mr. Oizo and “Flat Beat” has influenced the current generation of electro producers directly, but he must have influenced the Ed Banger roster, as his sound is audible in much of Justice and SebastiAn’s material. But with the current wave being influenced by them rather than Mr. Oizo and his other French peers, the forward thinking nature that characterised them has become rathed diluted.

Electro is a scene which is dominated by macho posturing, something which is quite ridiculous considering its sole aim seems to be to unleash an ever increasing assault of compressed noise and ridiculous sound effects at the listener. There’s a sense whilst listening to Lambs Anger that Dupieux is perhaps having a joke at our expense, that his music is a reaction against the highly compressed chopped up sound that is currently so huge with certain people, taken to its logical end point. But I really don’t think this is the case.

Dupieux obviously genuinely loves this sound, but it isn’t just compressed synths that characterises this album, it’s the constant influence of classic disco, whether through the sound and structures of his own tracks, or the use of samples, and it’s this influence which gives the album a little more weight than most of his imitators. The infuence of disco runs strong through labelmates Justice, but here Oizo runs with it just that little bit further. Furthermore, and something that is especially ironic given electro’s masculine leanings, Dupieux chooses a computerised female voice to represent himself throughout this album. These are tricks that could have so easily failed, but they add a much needed element of humour, which, along with the cheesy pop hooks and chopped up beats, highlight just how po-faced a lot of current electro is.

It has a number of weak tracks, most notably Uffie’s contribution (are all Ed Banger artists contractually obliged to include her on every album?) which will go no way to convincing anyone who didn’t like her before that she is of any consequence. But it is filled with tracks like the brilliant “Positif”, a track comprised of a sadistic rave synth which is inexplicably stopped half way through for 10 seconds of chopped up disco samples. But “Positif”, like most of the tracks on the album, is best enjoyed by suspending any notions of what music should be, and taken with a pinch of salt. As a rare album release for Ed Banger, Lambs Anger isn’t as focused an album as Justice’s debut. But it does show that electro does have a future, and that true to form, Ed Banger are still the leaders of the pack by quite a distance.

MP3:> Mr. Oizo – Z

Download audio file (Mr. Oizo – Z.mp3)

Lambs Anger is available November 17th on Ed Banger Records