Feadz – Happy Meal EP 3.9

                  I try to avoid garbage music. Sometimes, try as I might, it finds me. Sure, you could say that this has a good sense of humor. That somehow such thing should excuse it from having any actual worth. What’s sad is that somehow it has even less worth that the disposable garbage Uffie puts out every couple of months.

                “Suck It” summarizes up Feadz’s attitude towards his listeners. Actually, it comes closest to having something resembling talent. He rips off electro for all it is worth. While he’s no Mr. Oizo or countless other, better French musicians, he makes a halfway memorable song.

                The rest doesn’t even deserve to be mentioned. It is uniformly dreadful. Feadz embodies the worst of Eurotrash music. Nearly single-handedly, he has made me avoid eye contact with well-dressed Parisian males on the subway. No mean feat. Please avoid this if possible.

Mr. Oizo – Half a Scissor 7.5

Quentin Dupieux is probably better known for his infectious “Flat Beat” song. But I feel that a lot of this has the same weirdness going on with a greater deal of attention paid to minor details. Unfortunately, it is the broken nature of the music that can initially prove to be off putting. Even the names of the songs sort of indicate a certain joke, like having the title “The End” following the “intro”.

                The beats are brought as far as they can be to the state of brokenness. It sort of speaks to Quentin’s abilities that he veers away from making this completely inaccessible. Plus, this works much better than “Lamb’s Anger” which wasn’t as well executed as an album, relying too heavily on dance clichés to get the point across.

                Now there are certainly danceable moments with this album. “Drop Urge Need Elle” is absolutely insane. Being so insistent on a hyper-active environment (having so many samples and such a fast tempo) makes it one of the more memorable pieces on here. “Nazis” does more of a funk-infused grind to it. 

                Most of these tracks show off Quentin’s debt to funky electro. Thankfully here he avoids a lot of the pratfalls like those suffered by so many of the Ed Banger mates. He adds a great deal of personality to the proceedings through random surprises (like Half a Scissor blasting into a dance track halfway through) or the grooves displayed on (ee). Fun is heavily represented here.