Tuesday 11 October 2022, 8pm

Photo by G. Fauveau

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp + Bas Jan

No Longer Available

Founded in 2006 by Vincent Bertholet (Hyperculte), the Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp is a large-scale project. Designed as a real orchestra, the size of the ensemble has varied over time. Now with 12 members, 14 in the past or 6 at the beginning, the ensemble has scoured the stages of Europe to demonstrate that the formula "the more the merrier" has never been more true than on stage.

Whether in prestigious festivals (Paléo Festival de Nyon, Fusion Festival, Incubate, Womad, Bad Bonn Kilbi, Jazz à la Vilette) or on the four albums released since its launch, the group shows an incredible fluidity. The Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp (a mischievous title in homage to traditional African groups - Orchestre Tout Puissant Konono n°1, Orchestre Tout Puissant Polyrytmo etc... - and to one of the greatest dynamizers of 20th century art) embraces the forms of its musicians while pushing them to their limits. The result is a powerful, experimental, unstable and terribly alive, organic sound.

These characteristics can be found on We're OK. But We're Lost Anyway, fifth opus of the band. Built around twelve musicians, extirpated from their respective biotope, it develops a repetitive musicality which, deployed in successive waves, creates a feeling of trance. Mixing free jazz, post punk, high life, brass band, symphonic mixtures and kraut rock, their sound only goes beyond the limits of genre. Transcendental, almost ritualistic, the music is coupled with powerful lyrics, declaimed in rage against a world that is falling apart. Adorcist, hypnotic and post-syncratic, the Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, far from Tzara's manifesto, is somewhere between Hugo Ball's phonetic psalms, a Sufi procession that turns into a brawl and a voodoo ritual, but always with a precision proper to the monomania of an asperger.

Bas Jan

London-based ensemble Bas Jan return with a new expanded line-up and their second album ‘Baby U Know’. Released on Lost Map in January 2022, it is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2018 debut album Yes I Jan, which was hailed for its “messy majesty” (9/10, Uncut) and “beautifully fractured art-pop” (★★★★, Mojo). Bas Jan were co founded in 2015 by Serafina Steer, Sarah Anderson and Jenny Moore. The band now features Emma Smith (Jarv Is, Meilyr Jones, Seamus Fogarty and founder member of the Elysian Quartet) on violin and bass, Rachel Horwood (Trash Kit, Bamboo, Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business) on drums, Charlie Stock (The Irrepressibles) on electric violin and Steer on keys and bass.

Photo by Sophie Baker