Vitalic - OK Cowboy 20Y LP
Originally released in 2005, Vitalic's debut album, OK Cowboy, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary and is being reissued in several formats (box set, double vinyl, CD, digital) featuring rare tracks and previously unreleased version.
OK Cowboy is a seminal album in electronic music, a pivotal record between eras. Analysis.
In the early 2000s, France firmly established itself on the electronic music map. French Touch had conquered the planet in just a few years. However, this movement, essentially house disco, was already beginning to lose steam. Originally underground, this scene had been courted by multinational record companies, and productions labeled "French Touch" were now flooded radio stations and record store shelves. The innovative spirit of the movement gradually disappeared, and it was from the underground that another wave would emerge. While the original French Touch was based in Paris and Versailles, a new generation of artists arrived from all over France. Like Miss Kittin & The Hacker in Grenoble, David Carretta in Marseille, or Vitalic in Dijon. These producers invented a new sound, rawer, more electro, more rock.
Active on the techno rave scene since the mid-1990s under the alias Dima, Pascal Arbez-Nicolas became Vitalic with the release of Poney EP, his debut maxi-single, in 2001. A dazzling and daring maxi, Poney EP notably contains the title "La Rock 01" which quickly became a hit in both clubs and raves. The single is an electro storm driven by a metronomic rhythm on which dense and menacing synth layers fall. The French magazine Les Inrockuptibles spoke at the time of a track "on which Nirvana seems to collide with Daft Punk". The title "La Rock 01" was played by many DJs (Aphex Twin, Sven Väth, Felix Da Housecat, Tiësto) and appeared on several mixed CDs, including one by Miss Kittin (On The Road) and most notably, another by Belgian duo 2manydjs, then at the height of their popularity (As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 2).
The Poney EP maxi also contains "Poney Part 1" and "Poney Part 2”, two strong tracks in the spirit of "La Rock 01." Together, these three tracks form the backbone of the OK Cowboy album. Released in 2005 by the Different label, a division of PIAS, this first album imposes Vitalic's signature: an electro, energetic, robotic discharge, humanized by voices (his own voice, distorted through his machines). One standout example is “My Friend Dario”, the new single and another key moment on the album, with its guitar-like synths and a chorus that epitomizes electroclash. OK Cowboy also features other powerful electro/techno tracks like “No Fun” and “Newman”, driven by pounding rhythms and distorted, acidic melodies.
This first full-length album also gives Vitalic the freedom to explore a wide range of genres with his synthesizers: electronic polka (“Polkamatic”), sixties-style boogie driven by organs (“Wooo”), a pop ballad with vocoded vocals (“The Past”), seventies electronic experimentation (“Repair Machines”), cinematic synthetic soundscapes (“Trahison”), a hypnotic electroclash loop (“U and I”), and crackling drum patterns (“Valletta Fanfares”). With OK Cowboy, Vitalic showcases a vast palette of rhythms and contrasts, all in a style uniquely his own. The result is a retrofuturistic, baroque, synthetic, magical, and epic work—a landmark record in a time of transition.
During the four years between the Poney EP and the album OK Cowboy, Vitalic also established his live stature. His incendiary performances were acclaimed, from the Sónar festival in Barcelona to the Montreux Jazz Festival and the BBC in London. The release of OK Cowboy then propelled the artist onto stages across the globe—from the United States to Japan and Australia
Vitalic's music has received very positive reviews worldwide. "Synthetic, epic, euphoric, his techno resembles a funfair," writes Stéphane Davet in the French newspaper Le Monde. While his colleague Odile de Plas, from the same newspaper, states: "Vitalic is establishing himself as the most credible successor to Daft Punk, in terms of efficiency and unifying power." Éléonore Colin of the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles enthuses: "Vitalic has established himself as the Wagner of BPM, the Muhammad Ali of rave." Meanwhile, still in France, Trax magazine declares: "If electronic music were a question, Vitalic would be the answer." Before analyzing the phenomenon: "Merging on the dance floors of clubs in a hysterical and volcanic fervor of fans of feverish pogos as well as adepts of the psychedelic loop, Vitalic has elevated the dancefloor to unsuspected heights, multiplying the energy of headbangers with the madness of techno freaks”.
The album OK Cowboy was also praised abroad. It received a 9/10 in the English magazine New Musical Express (NME), which wrote: "Vitalic is the mysterious metal disco warrior with the power to turn dancefloors into moshpits." In the United States, the highly demanding website Pitchfork awarded the album an 8.6/10 and gave it the "Best New Music" label. The review ended with this admiring conclusion: "Vitalic made a record that's in the same league as Homework or Discovery."
Finally, in 2010, the English site Resident Advisor published its Top 100 albums of the 2000s. OK Cowboy was ranked at number 50, with this glowing comment: “Very few French producers can claim to have had a first album as primitively raw as Vitalic. The power of early, heavily compressed tracks like ‘Poney Pt. 1’ and ‘La Rock 01’ were so stunning it blew electroclash's self-absorbed mind and even turned James Murphy from punk to techno.”
Beyond the glowing reviews and critical acclaim it received upon its release, the album OK Cowboy undeniably marked its era and became a classic. It perfectly encapsulated that moment in time while foreshadowing the rawer, noisier sounds of French Touch 2.0 (the new wave led by Justice and the artists of the Ed Banger label). Twenty years later, the impact and power of this landmark record still make it a defining marker of the mid-2000s—and one whose sound remains just as relevant today
