BOT (live at La Garance)

Cavaillon
28 November 2018

Theatrical ensemble BOT have been presenting their Ramkoers (Collision Course) production around Europe for the last few years, frequently performing in disused factories and other spaces that allow them to bring their post-industrial cabaret to venues appropriate to their subject matter. Tonight’s show is performed on the generously sized stage of La Garance in Cavaillon, one of the more recent additions to a region already brimming with theatrical history, so while the atmosphere of grimy decay may be absent, the sound and sightlines are crystal clear.

Though La Garance and French theatre in general are no stranger to avant-garde antics, musical or otherwise, it’s unlikely that many in the audience tonight will have witness anything quite like Ramkoers. That is, unless they are familiar with the live activities of the likes of Faust or Einstürzende Neubauten, both of which are obvious touchstones to tonight’s event, which firmly places BOT in a line of art that can be traced back at least as far as Luigi Russolo‘s intonarumori noise-making devices of the early twentieth century.

But where those bands are often concerned with (semi-)controlled chaos and high-energy ructions sent forth at high volume into the waiting ears of an audience they have schooled in the ways of musical sturm and drang, BOT take a good dollop of inspiration from both the self-built sound-making devices and story-telling methods of Tom Waits. in his clang-boom-steam years. This aesthetic is particularly present in the deadpan humour and melancholy songs (presented entirely in Dutch, but the emotional content is transmitted clearly enough), shot through with bursts of ya-da-a-ya-la vocalising and melancholy wordless harmonies.

This is to be no ordinary evening of musical theatre, nor a straightforward concert either. The audience enters to find an almost bare stage set only with a pair of bowling balls on runners in each back corner. The house lights are up, and remain so as, after a brief delay, the balls are set free to roll across the stage diagonals, and a wheezing self-propelled accordion enters caterpillar-style, trailing behind it an umbilical electrical power cable. Puffed-out smoke rings are emitted from stage right, eliciting gasps of surprise from the crowd, and a flutter of newspapers are blown across the bare boards; a scaffolding pole falls with a spell-breaking clang, and BOT start to emerge.

The way in which tonight’s performance is constructed allows the ensemble to build tension and dramatic moments perfectly, and this is evident from the moment that a bright red oil drum rolls erratically into position at the middle of the stage, while kilted performers make their entrances and get to work. A pump organ is wheeled in on its side, the organist pedalling away as he is tilted into position and a glockenspiel is hung in place on the gantry set at the mobile organ’s side once it has on longer served as the handle. All the while a disembodied voice is singing; and another delighted cry comes softly from the spectators as the oil drum is titled upright, revealing the head and shoulders of BOT’s main singer, who has been chanting from the uncomfortable-looking position inside the drum all the while.

His efforts are shown to be all the more remarkable when he extracts his not inconsiderable frame from the confined space and sets about leading the group through an hour or so of increasingly bizarre musical machinations. As the evening proceeds, more and more elaborate contraptions are manoeuvred into place on an increasingly crowded floor by BOT and the theatre’s stage hands. There are compressed air-powered horned organs, a whirring mechanical drum machine that looks like it could have come straight from Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s City Of Lost Children. A rocket-sized vertical column is erected, a selection of vintage keyboards are deployed to handle melody and mood alongside a battery of tubas and other brass and percussion instrumentation, some heavily modified (to disgorge smoke, in the case of the bass drums), others in more normal configuration.

As the evening progresses and the stage lights gradually descend, so more and more pieces of Heath Robinson-esque instrumentation are brought on and added to the ever-changing soundscape. A disembodied mechanical hand is set tapping out a monotonous note on an infant’s toy keyboard, and is soon joined by a 360-degree rotating piano, rolling back and forth across the stage for all the world as if Leonardo de Vinci had set it in motion,  keeping up the one-note rhythm. When things might become too plangent or repetitive, the group will suddenly drop everything and bash out a strident tune on timpanis, scrawl out some distended electric slide guitar or go running through the audience with a megaphone. At one point, a massive gantry is lowered on chains from the ceiling and later becomes the rails for  a washtub on wheels to be set to and fro like a bizarre see-saw while its occupant blows serenely on a euphonium.

There is a road cone air cannon spraying money in the air among lilting Theremin solos, throbbing analogue synthesizer filter sweeps among the clattering cutlery, the eerie sound of a hand-pump swanee whistle battery and all manner more of good things, identifiable or otherwise. All the while, the four members of the troupe plough on with a concentrated determination, balancing the demands of timing and pace with keeping the music going as if they were rude mechanicals keeping the wheels of musical industry turning. It’s almost breathtaking just watching them continuously set up and propel into life a seemingly never-ending array of retrofitted sousaphones and trombones in collision. Then there is the sound of mechanised marching boots and BOT men dashing from one side of the stage to another to crash their cymbals while the mechanized percussion chugs on. A particular manic moment is well-heralded, two of the band making great play of slipping off their heavy work boots in favour of two pairs of traditional Dutch wooden clogs and stamping out on firecrackers in a welter of explosive delight.

So by the time the auditorium is in darkness and a rotating double-light device illuminates the room to the sound of a hand-cranked siren wails, the end can only come suddenly with all the signalled inevitability of the sound of air deflating from a balloon and the clonking descent of cowbells rocking down poles applied to the gantry. Their well-deserved standing ovation goes on for a good few minutes, and afterwards there is a chance to inspect the various devices and decompress back to normality, unwelcome as it may be when the alternative could be both as entertaining and enthralling as witnessing this Ramkoers.

-Richard Fontenoy-