Customer Reviews

Ok Cowboy

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Vitalic's OK Cowboy is a great upbeat, fun and generally awesome album. If you're happy and you know it, bob your head. It starts off with Polkamatic which is a very cool, almost Popcorn-esque song that really only gets you started.

Throughout this entire album I felt myself almost infused with the energy of Vitalic's playing. It is a very cool sound, and if you liked Daft Punk's Discovery, even more so if you like Daft Punk's Human After All, I really think you'll love this album. I really hope to see more great stuff from this band in the future.

Songs I loved:
Polkamatic
Poney Part 1
Wooo
La Rock 01
Poney Part 2

Definitely check this out! Hopefully a cheaper version will come to Amazon and you can buy it at a regular price, because this is definitely worth the buy!

The heavy synth-based swagger of these trashy tunes makes this one of the best electro albums I've heard in some time. "La Rock 01" and "My Friend Dario" are the best-known tracks - the former building into a steady, unwavering grind, the latter much more pop-based. Other delights include the immensely catchy "Wooo" and the poignant swirl of "The Past". Vocoders proliferate, but they're generally used in a creative way. There's a certain sense of postpunk murk in the use of synthesizers to only vaguely suggest melodies. This is great stuff.

Place this CD in your car stereo.

Hit the highway, drive south across the USA, blast across the fence at the Mexican border, up your speed to 120 and barrel through to Central America. Attach rocket boosters and hop the Panama Canal. Zing through South America, attach hydrofoil to bottom of vehicle. Race across Antarctica and into Africa. Throw on sunscreen, up speed to 200, and plow into France.

Stop the car, say hello to Vitalic (Pascal Arbez), and thank him for giving you the most ingenious, ecstatically ass-kicking electro-techno-whatever-pop album in recorded history.

Don't stay too long bothering Vitalic. Go home, cowboy.

very awesome debut. vitalic is by far one of my favorite electro artists and this album can prove why. you can put this cd at a party and just press play and let the album run. i've heard many of these songs mixed at live sets as well including "LA Rock 01", "Poney, Pt1", "My Friend Dario", "No Fun", and "Newman". Totally worth the purchase.

Also I do love this album and gave it 5 stars, but I have heard most of this sound before. A very similiar music in style and power was produced a few years ago by another French man. Laurent Garnier's album ( the only one I know) "Unreasonable Behaviour" sounds so alike that I wonder was Vitalic actually influenced by him.I am actually amazed that nobody has made that connection yet.Until know Laurent Garnier was one of my most liked performers in that style of music, now I have to add Vitalic to that short list.

I ran across this album on one of those "hipster" websites best albums of the year lists, and when they said that "ok cowboy" was what daft punk's "human after all" should have been, my interest was sparked. As far as the daft punk comparision, this album BLOWS ANYTHING they have ever done out of the water. "Ok Cowboy" is everything electronic should be, freaky, dirty, sexy, aggressive and keeping a good beat always. Here is just a description of the first three, stellar songs:

Intro - Polkamatic = oh my freaking god, this is one of most freaky things I have ever heard, its like music the Goddess Bunny would dance to. But none the less, I love it.

My Friend Dario - this song has caught a little buzz, has a weird lady talking about whatelse "my friend dario", then goes into pulsating electronica. a little splash of nin.

Poney Party 1 - another freaky ass song. if you are familiar with Visage, this kinda has that "fade to grey" vibe going for it, with some creepy dude singing, but again the music is nocturnal bliss.

trust me, this is an incredible album. so original. i heard this guy makes his music with no instruments or something. who knows. who knows what the hell is going on in vitalic's head?

2006 is proving to be "the year" for techno/electronica - you just can't find a more exciting genre right now for innovative pop music. "OK Cowboy" definitely ranks with other great disks this year from The Knife, Brazilian Girls, LCD Soundsystem, Basement Jaxx, and more. The music is unbelievably exciting - Vitalic takes "traditional" club music conventions - strong driving beats, good steady synth lines, excellent builds and fantastic breaks - and turns them on their heads. Like much of the great dance music this year, this is very visually stimulating stuff as well - you can't help but let your mind wander through strange landscapes as you listen. And the few vocals on this record are eerily abstacted - think Benny Benasi's synthesized voices run through The Knife's voice processors almost to the point of unintelligibility. As songs start, you're not sure what strange territory you're heading into - by the time the beats emerge, you can't help but groove to this incredibly fierce music. It's a shame the clubs I go to in San Diego and Chicago haven't caught on to the new crop of dance tracks this year - "Poney, Pt. 1," "My Friend Dario," "Newman," "Trahison," and "Valetta Fanfares" would burn up the dancefloor.

Vitalic is one of many great new artists of Electronica, he's French with the name Pascal Arbez and just like Air, Cassius and Daft Punk and this is his first album. It was already released in Europe in early 2005 but now it also comes to the states. I'd say his music is quite fammiliar to Daft Punk, most of the songs here are indeed electronic and many are uptempo, a great mix of electronica, techno, rock and catchy old school Italo Disco. It feautures the hit "My Friend Dario" but also several other could be hit singles. It's not that there are plenty of near great Electro acts around, but this really caught my attention and is a fresh new artist with original sound and fascinating ideas. Arbez doesn't take anything too seriously and mixes genres from left to right, infact he invented a story of being a Ukrainian trubcka player and occasional gigolo from a family of sea otter fur traders, jokes aside the music still sound pretty much French, but kudos to his sense of humour. For the major part this album is great and apart from the likes of Daft Punk, Mylo and Basement Jaxx you get the feeling that all of the songs of this album are part of a concept. This is good, but it does get a little repetitive at times considering that most songs are agressive uptempo songs with heavy synthesizers and often rock influenced sound like "Pony" and "My Fiend Dario" 2 of the best songs of the album actually. "Newman" sounds exactly like Daft Punk for example, "U and I" like Air, "No Fun" like Basement Jaxx but songs like "The Past" and "Trahison" does show some softer sides of Vitalic. "Valetta Fanfares" is odd, it sounds like a parade with drums and almost no electro sound at all. Needless to say, if you want some new electronica music to your collection, check this out. Vitalic is a fresh new name and this album is a great addition to your collection.

Here's an amazing electronic album that touches many subgenres and it touches excellently. My favorite track off of OK Cowboy is My Friend Dario. It totally feels like you are racing a car until the final moment when you crash. The stop start stop start is fully apparent in this track. It's perfect for driving but just don't actually cause an accident or anything while you are listening and driving.

Another great track off of OK Cowboy is Poney Part 1. It's an energetic, bruising electro cruncher and I'm sure you've heard this track before as it was licensed to many compilations and was a pretty big hit in the underground club world and was easily labeled "Electroclash" back when it had it's day. This along with Poney Part 2 and La Rock 01 are taken from the Pney EP.

There's actually nothing really wrong with this album. At times it feels and sounds like Daft Punk. As a matter of fact this is what Daft Punk should have released rather than Human After All but hey there wouldn't be a Vitalic would there if DF put out this album?? Anyway it's a great album if you haven't checked it out yet.

SJ
www.beatzblog.com

As many of the other reviewers have noted, if you liked Daft Punk's "Human After All" you're going to love this. This really is the epitome of what, to me, electronica should sound like. It's fast paced, non-stop, energetic and poppy. While bits and pieces of it get kind of sketchy, this album leaves you wanting more than the 13 tracks on here. Track 6, "The Past" is a hard-pounding bass adventure. It is very reminiscent of Phillip Glass' work on the "Qatsi" series with Godfrey Reggio. "La Rock 01" is one of the better known tracks off this album, and for good reason. It ties together everything that one can love about techno. The trippy loops, the bass line pumping, the mid coming up. It is a one song introduction to all things electronic. Overall, "OK Cowboy" is by far one of the better pieces of techno that I have heard in a long while. Seriously. If you even just liked Daft Punk, you'll love Vitalic.