The singer has become a deejay

Quentin Dupieux, aka Mr Oizo, will always be linked to ‘Flat Eric’ – the yellow puppet that featured in his classic ‘Flat Beat’.

But in this post I’d like to talk about this other track, which has been a part of 2manydjs set since it was released in the fall of 2008.

‘Positif’ was taken from Mr Oizo’s third album ‘Lambs Anger’, his first release on Ed Banger Records. The artwork for the album, done by Ed Banger’s favorite So Me, is a tribute to the famous French short film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (you know the same movie where Pixies sing about ‘slicing up eyeballs’ in ‘Debaser’). But here the actress has been replaced by Flat Eric.

‘Positif’ was part of the 2manydjs ‘Under The Covers’ live set, when they did it for the first time in 2009. It was in a mashup with Guns ‘n Roses ‘Welcome To The Jungle’. Dave and Steph added some animals sounds to the orginal track to emphasize the ‘Nous sommes des animaux’ (‘We are animals’) lyrics in the song.

The end of ‘Positif’ was mixed into ‘Olifanten’ – a spoken word bit in Dutch about elephants. This was taken from a record called ‘Cote D’or Presenteert U De Olifant In Woord En Beeld’, and the narrator is Marc Sleen. He’s famous in Belgium for his comic strip series called ‘Nero’.

Talking about ‘Flat Beat’, the other Mr Oizo classic Dave and Steph had been playing since ‘the Flying Dewaele Brothers’ era in the late 90s, there’s a funny anecdote about this in the Soulwax Belpop documentary.

The band visited Jeremy Moss to talk about their American record deal on Almo Sounds (the label of Moss and Herb Alpert). PIAS label boss Kenny Gates seized the opportunity to show Moss his latest success in the European charts.

Stephen: “So Kenny goes ‘I wanna show you something, Jeremy’ and he puts on a VHS tape with the video of ‘Flat Beat’ by Mr Oizo. After two minutes, Jeremy turns to him and says ‘Kenny, it’s a fucking puppet!’ (laughs)”.

Kenny Gates: “He really couldn’t believe we sold over two million copies of ‘Flat Beat’. For him it was like E.T., music from another planet, this electronic track without vocals. The Americans were not ready for this yet.”