"Number 5," cites Kid Loco, reeling off the OuMuPo charter, "The artist may not choose more than two tracks from one album. And, once the first track has been chosen, if the artist wishes to use a second from the same album, this has to be exactly two tracks away from the first." It sounds like a weird new board game, but this is just one of the eight quirky requirements listed in the "Ouvroir de musique potentielle" rulebook. And, as Kid Loco signed up to make the fourth album in this avant-garde series, he happens to know the rules by heart.

The "Ouvroir de musique potentielle" - or OuMuPo for short – is modelled on the famous "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle" project that spawned avant-garde novels by the likes of Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec and Italo Calvino. Adopting rigorously random but rigorously strict principles, these writers experimented with brave new forms, the most famous of which was La Disparition, Perec's attempt to write a French novel without using the letter 'c.'

In recent years, the "Ouvroir de potentielle" concept has been adopted by other zany experimental French authors, this time in the comic strip universe. The "Ouvroir de bande dessinée potentielle" applies the same type of random constraints on the drawing, narration and page presentation of comic books. Following the publication of a series of books by French editors L'Association, the OuBaPo has now branched out in a radical new direction with cartoonists and comic strip creators joining forces with musicians to create the OuMuPo. (The latter is not a permanent organisation, but a one-off collection). The creation of an OuMuPo had actually been envisaged before in the classical world in the 1950s, but modern technology and music trends have resulted in DJs and electro artists being better equipped than classical composers to indulge in this avant-garde stylistic exercise.

The OuMuPo, such as it exists today, is masterminded by Ici d'Ailleurs, a label based in Nancy which launched the career of Yann Tiersen (and whose groundbreaking back catalogue includes albums by Dominique Petitgrand, Programme, Julien Ribot, Rodolphe Burger, The Married Monk and Amor Belhom Duo). All material for the OuMuPo project has to be taken from the label's catalogue and each album in the series has to clock in at 42 minutes exactly. The albums are marketed with a 16-page comic strip in CD format created by a contemporary author working according to nine OuBaPo constraints.

Three albums in the series preceded Kid Loco's: Third Eye Foundation (with a comic strip by Manfred Gerner), Rob Swift (with a comic strip by Etienne Lecroart) and Rubin Steiner (in conjunction with Luz). Kid Loco, whose album is accompanied by a comic strip by JC Menu, explains how a series of random chances brought him into contact with the OuMuPo. "I was reading this book about the Russian Rayonist artist Larionov, who claimed that the essence of painting lay in individual brushstrokes. His concept didn't exactly revolutionise the art world, but it certainly sounded like fun! I'm also a big fan of the Dogme films, the whole style of working within imposed constraints. I happened to mention this to a friend at Discograph – the distributor of Ici D'Ailleurs – and he told me about the series. I said it would be fun to do an album like that and pretty soon after that someone from the label called me."

Kid Loco says he got a real kick out of working on the OuMuPo project, claiming he never found any of the constraints limiting in any way. "It was very much a stylistic exercise. Besides, when I go off and DJ in a club, the only thing I've got at my disposal to get people on the dancefloor is a stack of vinyls…" Signing up for the OuMuPo project, he received all the albums in the Ici d'Ailleurs back catalogue as his raw material. He admits that the only Ici d'Ailleurs release he had owned up to that point was Rodolphe Burger's On n'est pas des Indiens, c'est dommage.

"I knew Tiersen, too, of course," he says, "Anyway, I spent three or four days listening to around 35 albums. I didn't skip anything and I took notes the whole time. The albums don't actually have all that much in common. Some are really pop, others are pure electro or traditional rock… I can't say any of them were my absolute favourite album in the world, but everything was really interesting. I have to say, there hasn't been a bad album on Ici d'Ailleurs. And their back catalogue proved to be an absolute gold mine for a project like this. The moment I listened to the albums, the OuMuPo began making sense for me."

From that point on, Kid Loco applied his usual working method, borrowing samples and bursts of instrumentals and guitar solos left, right and centre. He also lifted snippets of tales from Dominique Petitgrand's albums and general ambiences "exactly as if I were making one long Kid Loco track." And OuMuPo volume 4 is very much a Kid Loco album, even if the track list credits over 70 samples. (JC Menu's comic strip is also a triumph of sampling, including Tintin and Pifou alongside other familiar cartoon faces).

Meanwhile, as the OuMuPo continues with its avant-garde series this spring with upcoming releases by DJ Hide with cartoonists Dupuy and Berberian, then DJ Krush with Killofer, Kid Loco has been busy on the recording front, too. In March, he is due to release Kid Loco: The Italian Job, an album of remixes for the Italian label Right Tempo who specialise in re-releasing film soundtracks from the 60s and 70s. After that, Kid will go on to release his own soundtrack to the animated film Delta State.

Kid Loco OuMuPo 4 (Ici d'Ailleurs/Discograph) 2006