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Since his first track "Flat Beat" in 1999 and the video that made a generational megastar of a yellow facecloth, selling three million records, Mr. Oizo has systematically walked off the beaten track, remained somewhat of a mystery and cultivated nonsensicalness as his ultimate trademark. As if to annihilate the fast and easy success that took over his early career, Quentin Dupieux, the man who hides behind that funny bird, has been applying his ubiquitous talents to directing and producing movies, DJing, being provocative and using Twitter as a medium for his sharp tongue, turning down easy advertising money and giving very few interviews, generally creating a legend around himself. Over 10 years after the insolent and freakish success of "Flat Eric," four odd films (Non Film, Steak, Rubber, Wrong), four albums, three soundtracks, tracks produced for electro pin-up Uffie and a string of carefully-released remixes and singles, Dupieux and his alter-ego Oizo have been established as the agitators of an age that dearly needs them. Dupieux is now releasing 21 tracks (totally remastered) from his prolific discography to go with the release of Wrong Cops, his fifth film that establishes intentionally heavy-handed humor as an art form. This record is as much the soundtrack for Wrong Cops as a carefully measured retrospective, a quirky best-of that is surprisingly constant. Twenty-one numbers over a 15-year period mixing classic and rare tracks with the same ease, which proves that despite his laissez-faire attitude, Quentin Dupieux has managed to stay true to the initial spirit of techno while redefining its contours and angles, mistreating keyboards and computers to get them to spit out their soul, while focusing on the rhythm, the techno artifacts and the dancefloor. Despite himself, Oizo has managed to become one of the last great electro artists to stand shoulder-to-shoulder next to the likes of Kraftwerk, Jeff Mills, Dopplerefekt and MMM! Film after film, Dupieux's absurd quality becomes more precise and refined. Wrong Cops, which could be summed-up in two lines: "All crooks, especially in the police force," is a commentary on humanity in its most mediocre and twisted form. It's a mix between American Z movie humor and Surrealist cinema and it contains all of Dupieux's obsessions: sexual perversion, drugs, the dregs of humanity, transsexuals, absurdity, dark humor, etc. Behind this collection of human deviances, Dupieux, always the agitator, opens a debate on the place of electronic music in the world today and what it says about us. In the end, Wrong Cops is a violent and comic attack against the iconic figure he has become, and yet another middle finger in the air. Features appearances from Sébastien Tellier, Gaspard Augé, and Marilyn Manson.
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