Send "Vitalic " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Few 21st-century house/techno tracks have proven as oddly influential as Vitalic's 2001 "La Rock" and "Poney Part 1". Released when microhouse's delicate sound-sculpting was being touted as dance music's future, and strangely first claimed by electroclash fans during that trend's brief and ignoble peak, Vitalic offered speaker-frying synth-riffs (or sometimes just synth-squeals) to scare off wannabe aesthetes and IDM refugees, reaffirming the productive struggle in post-acid dance between funk and floor-clearing noise. But as "Poney Part 1" and "La Rock" reared their ugly heads again and again, showing up on one compilation after another during the next three years with little new Vitalic material in sight, fans who valued humor and nuance as much as focused brutality may have wondered if producer Pascal Arbez had exhausted his one distortion-drenched trick.So it probably helped Vitalic's long-term career prospects that his 2005 debut album, OK Cowboy, included enough oddities (like "Wooo", with John Carpenter subbing for the oompah band at a local polka night) and slow jams (like "The Past", a rare non-unctuous trawl through 1980s synth-pop romanticism) to keep John and Jane Doe from tuning out after the 10th consecutive helping of fuck-you. Which is not to say Monsieur Arbez wussed out in the name of crossing over. The fearsome "Poney"-alikes far outweighed the goofball interludes, and if he'd released his second LP 12 months later, his rep as middlebrow dance music's premier scourge would have been secured. Instead, another three years passed between OKC and Flashmob, a period during which a horde of noisy, uncouth producers (many of them fellow Frenchmen in the Ed Banger orbit) popped up, turning overblown feedback and digital grime into exhausting shtick in record time. With the landscape glutted with punk-dance nobodies, Vitalic's mission-- to create deranged, over-the-top dance music that nonetheless honors disco's body-moving tradition-- became that much harder....full text |
| Residentadvisor |
| You know how when you're a kid, everything is absolutes? Modern dance music is kinda still stuck there, flipping between the night-and-day of dour seriousness vs. punch-your-mom-in-the-face party ethic. It makes it hard to find music that does more than soundtrack individual emotions. Somewhere between the Juan Maclean's raucous four-on-the-floor formula and chamber vox techno of the likes of Imogen Heap or Bat for Lashes, there lies a fabled land called subtlety. Most the time, only Brian Eno lives there. But for goddamn once in our lives, a new guy, Vitalic, nee Pascal Arbez, hits it. More than hits it. Owns it. Vitalic's debut full-length OK Cowboy made waves back in 2005 with its woozy blend of smarter-than-average synths and weirder-than-average samples. But there was this one track, "The Past," that came on like an Adderall-powered freight train loaded with paperback copies of Steppenwolf. (That's a metaphor for being rad and subtle at the same time.) And it left you being all "Why can't he make a whole record like that?" Wish granted. Our boy Arbez is back and he's got a danceable Enola Gay filled with subtlety bombs. Eponymous cut "Flashmob" feels like the bastard child of Justice and Lindstrom—detuned and headfucked, but not too far gone to exude shy thoughtfulness....full text |
| Contactmusic |
| Those of us whose musical flames are usually ignited by loud guitars and astute lyricism rarely venture forth into the forbidden zone known as the dancefloor. Until the first coming of rave and acid house it was virtually unknown for the two to meet even halfway, despite the best efforts of Giorgio Moroder, George Clinton and New Order to bridge the gap. Since then, a lot has changed and genuine progression has ensured the crossover has become an almost expected given for any creative artist intent on pushing those boundaries that extra step further....full text |
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