Belem & the MeKanics

Belem are a duo, consisting of diatonic accordionist Didier Laloy and cellist Kathy Adam. Laloy met Walter Hus, who provides The MeKanics – not a backing band, but an extraordinary assemblage of cables, pipes, metallic and wooden blades controlled by a computer. This creates, autonomously and acoustically, the sounds of an unusual 15-piece orchestra. This madcap apparatus is the 21st-century descendant of the mechanical organs that, like pianolas, automatically played music from sheets of punched card. Such instruments, made by the Decap company, were very popular in the cafés of Belgium in the middle of the last century. ‘Decap and Walter Hus worked for years,' explains Laloy, ‘to bring the breath of the flautist, the flexibility of the drummer and the virtuosity of the most virtuoso of Chinese musicians to mechanized instruments.' The music of Belem & The MeKanics is, as you might expect, splendidly eccentric, conjuring the fairground, the cabaret, chanson and early cinema. ‘L’Homme au Chapeau' develops into a Chaplinesque chase, while ‘Lego’s Tragedy' uses the uniquely elegiac quality of the button accordion, the sonorous depths of the cello and the musical whirlpool of Hus' machine. ‘Tu Cours Encore’, which lasts more than eight minutes, is symphonic; the interplay of human and mechanical musicians intriguing and unnerving. This music is theatrical, enthralling, sometimes alarming, and very European.