Topette!!

Topette!!

+ Cliff Stapleton

The new Anglo-French acoustic dance band Topette!! is one such…a collective of uninhibited musical adventurers playing self-penned and traditional music from anywhere with a winning mix of bonhomie and grit.

Of course it helps that those musicians are some of the finest on the Anglo-French dance scene…

Andy Cutting (diatonic button accordion)
James Delarre (violin)
Julien Cartonnet (bagpipes, banjo)
Tania Buisse (bodhrán)
Barnaby Stradling (acoustic bass guitar)​

Born out of friendship, the five-piece play naturally social music – for filling dancefloors, for listening, for  drinking with friends – but don’t expect it to merge into the background. This is raunchy, up-all-night, joyously jugular-grabbing dance music.

Driven by the rhythmic boiler-room of Stradling’s gnarly bass, Buisse’s intuitive bodhrán playing and Cutting’s warm bottom end, the melodies burst out of the seams of this bedrock. With great big anthemic walls of sound, the vibe is ‘Party!’: Cartonnet’s glowing French piping and visceral tenor banjo, Delarre’s bright, bushy-tailed fiddle lines and Cutting’s dynamic accordion style. They are, quite literally, having a bal!

The new 7-track EP Chez Michel – the name of the bar in France where the band was born – features an eclectic selection of material. Recorded in France earlier this year, it opens with an unexpectedly uplifting trad. French dance tune Bourée Morvandelle and Cartonnet’s own La Lustrée. but then careers off via a gloriously plunky version of Ola Bäckström’s Meatballs, Whiskey And Beer, a traditional Gnawa tune Hamouda and, underpinned by some seriously dirty bass, the ecstatic swirling trad. tune Maybe Macedonian?

Join in the party! Topette!