Music / Reviews
Review: Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp/Blind Yeo, Jam Jar
This was the kind of night the Jam Jar was created for – a happy party of original music for head, hands and feet. Enhanced by the venue’s anarchic arty decor and a charged-up capacity crowd of fun-loving folk we had all the elements of a top night out and we were not to be disappointed.
Blind Yeo (pic: Tony Benjamin)
Up from Falmouth, Blind Yeo were an interesting combination of retro-Hippy prog and Cornish beach rave vibes. With two guitars, keyboards, cello, bass, drums and percussion there was the potential to weave ambient droning textures around the moodily melodic songs. Meanwhile a propulsive rhythm section produced a driving undercurrent that was grist to the dance floor mill. The resulting sound had the psychedelic stoned rock drift of mid-period Gong or Steve Hillage refocussed towards the 24-hour party people generation (with occasional Krautrock sympathies). It was a great warm-up for the Orchestre to come.
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp (pic: Tony Benjamin)
And there they were – a 12-strong musical circus from Switzerland shoehorned onto the Jam Jar’s compact stage. Flanked by two marimbas, somehow they squeezed in a string trio of two violins and a cello, a brace of guitars, trumpet and trombone horn section and two percussionists as well as the discreetly invisible bandleader Vincent Bertholet’s bass tucked away out of sight at the back. They don’t do leaders in the Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp anyway, and it was very much a collective maelstrom unleashed once they all kicked in.
is needed now More than ever
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp (pic: Tony Benjamin)
What’s astonishing about the OTPMD is the apparently effortless collaboration of ideas and talents across such a wide range that, at any point, felt in perfect balance and somehow absolutely right. There were moments heading into Philip Glass minimalism that then veered towards Funkadelic groovers. Another song toyed with grindcore before the sonic curtains parted and heartfelt Balkan a cappella harmonies swept across us. Like seasoned plate spinners they knew how to let things teeter for a moment of delicate pizzicato fragility before unleashing an exhilarating drop into dance floor turbulence.
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp (pic: Tony Benjamin)
With such a range of voices available to them their sound could easily embrace pure folk, soulful funk, post-punk exhortation and quirky artlessness whenever they chose. Those last two drove their memorable anthem So Many Things To Feel Guilty About, a remorseless combination of jungly percussion and football chant vocals with Aby Vulliamy’s high speed stream-of-woke-consciousness energising into a full-tilt gallop denouncing the shame culture keeping us all in our place, quiet and spending. It epitomised the band’s style, the capacity to marshall their energy and apparent chaos into coherent and powerful music, to hold an audience spellbound yet keep them dancing. It was the purest of fun without ever being superficial or ingratiating and thus the best kind of entertainment.
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp (pic: Tony Benjamin)
It had been a year since the band last visited Bristol and after this performance we were of course left hoping that it might not be so long before we get a chance to dive back into their remarkable soundworld again.
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