Downloaded Mr. Oizo's newest EP today. At under 10 minutes, it is certainly a bit of a tease. But it's free, and free is hard to argue with. It has a lot of the great Oizo flavor you'd expect, and even features an odd appearance by Marilyn Manson on one of the tracks. "Amicalement," the title, apparently means something like "playfully," or "in a friendly manner" in French. But french is notoriously hard to translate (Just ask Maman), so don't quote me on it.
Mr. Oizo's tracks have a way of always being a little bit too short. They're like those fancy dishes you find in modern restaurants that are way too small. By the time you can even get a taste, it's over.
But in a way, it's the only way Oizo's more radical tracks could every work. I'm sure if you stretched out any of his more ridiculous interludes to four minutes, they'd sound terrible, and would be too repetitive to enjoy. His music is dadaist. It flirts with absurdity. His tracks are jarring, organic, noise-collages. Half modern art, half music. The fact that they leave you wanting more makes them that much more enjoyable.
The fact that many of his songs are incomplete reminds me of something I saw in a TED talk. It's a quote taken from the Japanese Essays in Idleness:
"In everything...uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth...Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one room unfinished."
Mr Oizo often leaves things unfinished.
No comments:
Post a Comment