CLAP’S!

Zic Zazou & Lutherie Urbaine

France

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A hotchpotch of strange instruments: bottle pianos, tube trumpets, pipe harmonicas, bucket drums, glove pipes and singing saws – things that whistle, clack and grind. Even a living-room lamp joins in the sound revelry. Compositions by Ennio Morricone, the starting point for this splendid universe of sound, are arranged into a combination of multimedia concert, object theatre and sound laboratory. This overpowering treasury of images and sound bites from Italo-Westerns, science fiction and film noir is played with such enthusiasm and rhythmic brilliance that it’s hard to say who the performers on stage are: the Sicilian Clan or the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The multi-instrumentalists and musical instrument inventors of Zic Zazou have veered between all manner of styles for the last thirty years. They combine jazz, rock, avant-garde, chanson, brass and classic elements with plenty of humour and poetry. The collaboration with Lutherie Urbaine is therefore no coincidence. The project initiated in 2000 was the brainchild of Jean Louis Mechali, many of whose compositions are multidisciplinary and developed for instruments made from recycled materials.