Is Mathieu Poulain a poseur? His website suggests the answer to this question is a resounding YES!
Here, the artist known as Oh!Tiger Mountain lists his influences as "electricity- reverberation-explosion" and a video espouses the virtues of randomness.
Musically, the crooning Frenchman is self consciously offbeat and claims to be carnivalesque.
With pseudo-psychedelic nods towards 60s pop and a freaky brand of folk, the sound lies in a sonic middle ground somewhere between Ariel Pink and Stereopathetic Soulmanure period Beck.
Poulain's eccentric, and frankly incoherent, use of English is evident on New Religion : "I must have fallen asleep some place between a bride and a commercial break", while on Your Most Prominent Son he sings obscurely of "A life worth living through the promise of a prowess"
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So adept is he at creating an enigmatic image for himself that I found it difficult to feel any real engagement with the music.
Scratch the surface and there's rather less originality here than we are led to believe.
Oh! Tiger Mountain's website
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