Tag: Tazon

Topette!!, as in the name of the band, always includes the two exclamation marks, and it would be churlish to suggest they are there by anything than by right. Used elsewhere, as lazy shorthand for exciting, this quintet bring back respectability, and reality, to such hyperbole. As your ears will soon reveal. 

Album number four, or five, if you include the live one, or six, with the EP that triggered it all off, Topette!! have been making music together for a decade, some members for a good deal longer, as a glance at the sleeve displays. The beating heart of the band, I would say, is the duo of Andy Cutting and Barn Stradling, each long termers in Blowzabella. Indeed, the MO of each band is not decidedly too different, each specialising in dance tunes, of, increasingly, continental extraction. It is hard to imagine that the vibrant balfolk movement over here would exist without either bands championing of the musics of Brittany, the Auvergne, Flanders and beyond.  

With Cutting on melodeon and diatonic accordion, Stradling on acoustic bass, the band is completed by Julien Cartonnet on banjo and cornemuse, the Gallic bagpipe, and James DeLarre on fiddle and viola. Earlier percussionist and bodhran player, Tania Buisee has now moved on, with the drums of Laurence Hart now providing a heftier wallop. The inspirations might remain the same, but now there is a greater sense of passion and urgency. Heck, they even risk the wrath of the purists by dipping into hitherto unforeseen fusions, but, knowing the crowd at Sidmouth, Shrewsbury and the rest, this will all be taken in their perfectly precise stride. 

It is with some bourrées, ‘D’Ambre/Ruthie Bosch/Sans Elle’, that the set opens, as it always should, a medley of three tunes in three time. Bookended by compositions from Sandrine Legreulet, it is one of Stradling’s tunes that makes up the filling, all three flying out the speakers like a flurry of fluttering, flapping geese. The bagpipes, fiddle and box play in loose unison, flailing gorgeously at the edges, whilst Stradling and Hunt lay down an expansive basement footprint that hoofs all over the shop. It is a glorious start. 

It is that bass guitar, linked to a loose thwack of drums, that also introduces track two,  and, had I not seen him touting said massive bass, I would not believe it a nominally acoustic instrument. ‘Vers Mon Étoile’ and ‘Ma Tante S’Apelle Christian’, a pair of schottisches, these are are typical of the essentially far from Scottish dance form, or would be without the rhythmic steam, as Cartonnet is now leading from the banjo, and they pile forward with no mean deliberation. To waltzes, next, it a delight that each set of tunes get to be categorised by style. Once again there are two in the set, the first of traditional Finnish origin, the second Italian. The first offers a stately ceremonial swagger, almost military in bearing, whilst it gently unwinds into the more complex sway of the partner tune. A snare drum keeps all on the correct toe. 

Polkas are never far from mind or earshot in dance tents, and it a set of, again, two that follow, one traditional the other not. As it starts, it is the engaging roll of banjo that is once more the core, giving a feel of hornpipe to the proceedings, added to as the fiddle and box swoop in. Andy Cutting gets in a writing credit for the jigs up next, his ‘Waiting For Janet’ paired with Mike Vass’ ‘Cavers of Kirkcudbright’. There is a sense of effortless lightness in the music, the hope being that it will transmit to the sometimes heavier feet, as all endeavour to find the same step. Cartonnet seems to be multi-tasking here, playing both his instruments at once, courtesy the studio, but it DeLarre’s smooth fiddle play that leaves the strongest connection. 

DeLarre still to the fore, it is just he and the mesmeric low register of Stradling that take the ‘Mahogany Whale’ into ‘Bayoyo’, a pair of increasingly exotic mazurkas (mazurkae?) Some almost South Indian style percussion creeps in, alongside lurky, lairy pipes. It could be a favourite, this medley, coming from DeLarre and Cartonnet respectively, but ,frankly ,they all could be, such the instancy and immediacy.  

A pumping melodeon is then a more familiar sound, as Cutting strides out for a further scottische, the awkward to pronounce ‘Ra Strà per Rod’. Rod is the clue, it being written by Stradling in honour of his late father, Rod, the squeezebox champion who enlivened so many English country dance bands, notably Old Swan Band, Tiger Moth and the nascent EII, of Red Hot Polkas fame. Seguing into ‘Harling Drove’, by DeLarre, banjo is now the dominant fixture, remaining so, until fiddle and box conclude. 

Anyone now looking at their watch or the length of this piece may be alarmed that the album is barely at the halfway mark; the band make no apology, citing they just laid down everything they had available, over the four days allowed. So, blame them, not me. 

Back to bourrées now, 2 time on this occasion, and I am fully getting the way this style of dance can hypnotise both dancers and listeners; the former into a seemingly automatic and never ending processionional, the latter oblivious as to where the dancers may eventually head. Hamelin and pied pipers come easily to mind. Then more waltzes, ‘De L’Abbaye’ and ‘Harry Lane’, each continuing a sense of never ending, Topette!! Have, by this stage, made a case for folk dance to be the most important musical movement on the planet. Certainly, their blend of old and new, simultaneously, convinces more than many a wackier fusion, and that these two tunes come from the bandmembers, rather than history, seems astonishing. 

Bourrées again, for ‘Bacon Strips’, this time a sprightlier step required, which, as it blends into ‘One Of Two”, becomes a sinuous interweaving of instrumentation. Hunt, as ever, is a total metronome, entirely on top and in control. But we haven’t had any bals limousines yet, have we, it time to bring a pair out the bag, with bagpipe notes cascading out, like smoke from a gypsy’s pipe. The whole sounds essentially Balkan, it hard, yet again, to believe the writing contemporary. 

Slowly, slowly, we are getting there, only three to go, but when the first of those is a pair of what I am definitely now calling mazurkae, ‘L’Ours’ and ‘The Acharavi’. With the second of these gaining a credit for Flook man, Brian Finnegan, each are gainly and stately swirls of conjoined instrumentation, over/under which DeLarre’s fiddle acts both as counterpoint and a handy reference for the basic melody, whilst his bandmates extemporise. Melodeon takes it into that second tune, switching gradually, as the rest regroup, from sombre to sanguine, hopeful even. The bagpipes find that perfect pitch point that tugs on all things emotional, and it is another high water mark in this monster of a record. 

In a shift from expectation, so subtle has been the Stradling/Hunt introduction of polyrhythms from afar, that there should be a dub track doesn’t even raise an eyebrow of concern. ‘Boe’s Dub’ is a masterful acoustic concoction that somehow screams authenticity, when it really shouldn’t, and it works against any preconceived bias to  inclusion within the bal. Let’s now see if Messrs. Cutting and Stradling can persuade Blowzabella into a similar diversion. The bass is, of course, wonderful and if, say, Adrian Sherwood, can be persuaded to consider a remix, I’d be well up for that!. 

It is with funeral rolling drums that the album ends, a Gavotte (d’Aven), ‘Peltoniemen Hintriikan Surumarrsi’, slow and cermonial. I am uncertain if it actually has a slow built in accelerator, but, as the fiddle and pipes swoop about the tune, that suggestion becomes apparent, as if the stake can’t wait, the embers already alight. It is a tremendous finale for well over an hour of music, music that never palls, such the variety and invention applied. “May contain excessive funk” warns the sleeve. If Topette!! have already two exclamation marks, may they now have three, please? 

Seuras Og 

Artist website: www.topette.co.uk

‘Three Time Bourees’ = official video: