Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp "We're OK. But We're Lost Anyway" (Bongo Joe Records, 2021)

In 2011 or 2012, when I wanted to quit writing (and I did for quite some years devoting myself to photography) I wanted to leave with a couple of articles: an interview with young Stefania ‘?Alos’ Pedretti (available on the italian webzine Mescalina) and an article about a young photographer (available on the italian webzine Culturame). But, what made me quit writing? It’s simple: the quality of the music I was listening to at the time.

Something was going terribly wrong. I listened to a lot of young musicians in London the year before and if I loved the ‘great old men’ of the avant-garde (Evan Parker, Louis Moholo-Moholo to name a couple) on the other hand I felt little or no empathy with the young improvisers or experimental musicians, with some notable exception. And I was feeling as Mr Jones (as in Bob Dylan song Ballad of a Thin Man, when he sings “And you know something is happening but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?”).

So my idea was: “I don’t know where the music is going, I know only it is going badly, in sad places, so I want to explore art as an artist in order to understand better, on my own skin, what’s going on”. So I did photography and then theatre for many years, and finally I came back to writing. It was not a dramatic come back. I was always putting a review here and there, even in this blog. But finally, thanks to a colleague, I found out the perfect album to talk about this lost decade. 

The Album is “We’re OK, but We’re Lost Anyway” (great title, indeed) by the incredible Orchestre Tout Puissand Marcel Duchamp. An italian magazine of music made me aware or these guys, and the first time I listened to their music through youtube – a mix, as Stefano I. Bianchi wrote on Blow Up, of ‘afrobeat, Ex, Stereolab, Folk, jazz’ – I felt this sense of melancholy and sadness that was not coming from the notes played by the musicians, but kind of ‘in between’ the music, but being the most part of it.

So I kind of felt that all the sadness for the lost of music – there are only few record shops left in my town where I can find CDs or vynils of free jazz, improv and contemporary music and I hate Amazon so there’s no way I’m gonna use it to purchase records, plus the last one was kind of a ‘lost’ decade: I mean, apart from few musicians, even apart from the musicians you’ve found during this years on Complete Communion there was not that much great music to listen to – was here, better said: instead of listening to a new record, I was listening to all the sadness of the decade. 

This is the best part of “We’re OK ...”. But before analysing the album, few words for the band. The orchestra has born in Geneva in 2006, thanks to the bassist Vincent Bertholet who basically wanted to give life to a group of musicians who could play together around Europe. Initially fueled by six players, the band during the years became a 12tet and now it is a band of 14 elements. The band has a kind of political consciousness that makes it very nice to my ears and heart.

“From Mexican Zapatists to Chiapas rioters, we stand aside every person who wants to destroy capitalism through the dismantling of great commercial empires in favor of local agricultural enterprise” states Bertholet, and this is really the less we can do in this world right now. But what about the music? After an introduction so heavy, the music has to be at least incredibly good. And it is, even if its best part for me is I won’t say ‘not intended’, but ‘unconscious’. 

The album opens with Be Patient, where an accordion lead the listener though his microtones and minimal melody to Bertholet patterns embellished with violins twirling around the bass. Then drums and horns enter. The atmosphere is full of rage, while we start listening to the voice. If I have to make a comparison, the last Portishead come to my mind. But the trombone and the guitar mumbling together comes from experimental music, and so memory goes to records for instrumental ensemble and voice like “Les Stances A Sophie” and “Raining on the Moon”.

Empty Skies shows us what drums and strings can do if combined together exploring repetition through different pitches. Voice sweetens the listener while guitar and strings develop a distorted unison that is possibly what made Bianchi, the italian journalist above, think about the Ex (accompanied by Tom Cora I guess). So Many Things (To Feel Guilty About) is based on the dynamics of a guitar counterpointing a vocal chorus. Drums give depth to the ensemble, vibraphone too as it takes its turn. 

Blabber, as I was hoping to hear, is opened by vibe and drums, plus cello and voice playing a game of underlines to which all strings add tasty spices here and there, while We Can Can We is driven by horns, cello and drums. The rhythm is undoubtely that of Fela Kuti’s music, with a guitar dipped into minimalism as the vibraphone. Flux is a delicate journey into a dream made of horns, voice and vibraphone, whereas guitar adds a punk rhythmic ad a certain point. Drum’s colors set on fire the male rap, again with the guitars developing a rock drama made of multiple grating.

Connected is a couple-of-minute-divertissement for chorus and guitar, Beginning, the last five minute track on the album is their first song I listened to in a live version you’ll find at the end of this review, and it is made of a rhythm mimicking the circularity of afrobeat with a minimalist guitar and multiple horns, percussions and strings to set the music on fire. It has that warrior spirit, but also that not intended but real melancholy I was telling you more above. But the silence is over.

The album terminates with the one and a half minute of Silent, the closing of the courtain with a pinched cello, strings, voice and the desire for an uprising. My dream now is to take the band to play a live concert in one of the many squatted centers in my town. Maybe, having some contacts, this will be possible in the future. It really would be the best venue for the Orchestra’s fire music and at the same time, the encounter point for an awakening of both music and people. Together.