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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Make some Noize

Boys Noize Oi Oi Oi Grade: B+

If European house purists were up in arms about DJ duo Justice's hard-nosed debut , Oi Oi Oi just might kill them. In his first full-scale release, Boys Noize, a.k.a., German DJ Alex Ridha and his laptop, borrows the French pair's same dance-rock approach but turns the dials to 11, offering boisterous dance-floor bangers that cut rugs like 20 chain saws through 21 amplifiers.\nLoud and filthy, Oi Oi Oi has about as much finesse as a sledgehammer. Before listeners even have time to respond to the innocuous "Hello" that introduces the album, Ridha pummels them with a wall of gritty guitar riffs as a voice from above commands, "Dance, dance, dance." So much for introductions.\n"& Down," the album's first track and single, sets the tone for the rest of Oi Oi Oi, with ugly, jagged synths ground into skin-tight grooves. The formula is perfected on other standouts such as "Shine, Shine," "Let's Buy Happiness" and the hard-drive-melting "Oh!" \nExcept for a remarkable remix of "My Moon, My Man" -- in which Feist's gossamer croons provide the perfect foil for Boys Noize's full-throated digital gargles -- the album offers little in the way of vocals. Of course, this may be Ridha's way of kindly telling listeners to shut the hell up and sing along with their feet.\nAt its best, Oi Oi Oi, with its robotic chants and inhuman aloofness, is a harder, better, faster, stronger version of Daft Punk's disappointing man vs. machine concept album Human After All. But while Ridha's youthful brashness makes forefathers Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter look like fogies, his immaturity shows in the album's monotone, balls-to-the-wall clip. \nFortunately, what Boys Noize lacks in grace or variety, he makes up in pure testosterone. Sure, it may be difficult to relax and listen to Oi Oi Oi all the way through. But this album wasn't meant to be heard sitting down.

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