1999 Mr Oizo: Flat Beat

If 'Block Rockin' Beats' was a title that reviewed itself, 'Flat Beat' does a similarly decent fist of flagging up the sounds that lay within the disc. Only it's not really meant to; the 'flat' refers to 'Flat Eric', a yellow, rodent-like puppet who starred in a series of late nineties commercials for Levi jeans. Looking back at the history of these advertising campaigns, Levi always seemed to veer between trading on nostalgia ('Wonderful World', 'Stand By Me') and tapping into the contemporary ('Inside', 'Spaceman' ). That's a convenient distinction anyway, but 'Flat Beat' lobs a spanner into the works of my little thesis.

Little more than a lo-fi squelch of instrumental rhythm, had this been served up to me cold then I'd have struggled to throw a net around the track in terms of when or where it was recorded; sometime during the past twenty years sounds about right. Mr Oizo, however, was in fact a French house producer/DJ, and so on that front 'Flat Beat' is clearly from the 'now', but if you'd told me it was a stray outtake from a seventies krautrock album then I'd have no cause to doubt you either. All of which makes 'Flat Beat' a curious proposition - too slack to dance to, too sparky and weird for ambience and with nothing for the kids once you get past Eric on the cover, 'Flat Beat' is a mischievous, KLF style triumph of marketing over content and I kind of see it as a custard pie in the face of everyone who bought and 'bought' it. Now that's what I call comic relief.