Tout Bleu

Tout Bleu’s second record, Otium, recalls a route where the electronic crosses paths with the
acoustic. This new milestone in Genevan multi-instrumentalist Simone Aubert’s (Massicot,
Hyperculte) musical field represents a kind of fruitful deceleration. Initially conceived as a solo
project in 2018, the act is now an exploration ground for the musicians gathered on Otium :
Naomi Mabanda on the cello (Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, Chien Mon Ami) and
Luciano Turella on the alto (Irtum Branda) encounter the sampling machines of POL, that could
already be found on the first eponymous album Tout Bleu. In Tout Bleu’s music, the partmelodic, part-abrasive riffsreminiscent of Massicot are present, and so are the socially engaged,
energetic singing of Hyperculte. However, the band, by using acoustic instruments, vocals and
electric guitar in an unconventional way, draws an orchestral landscape that sometimes flirts
with pop, and where strings merge in polyrythm on low tempo beats.

In Latin, otium suggests free time, detached from any contingency, a form of pure leisure, in
the non-economic sense of the term, which is opposed to neg-otium, commerce. All Bleu claims
this time of withdrawal, this productive, fertile and assumed idleness, which allows the group
to unfold without hindrance its hypnotic and pulsating web, between krautrock trance and
atmospheric no-wave. A sort of pre-rock spleen, Otium distils in nine tracks a dark, tense but
soft music, nourished by hope. The arrangements exhale the warm or sharp essences of the
strings, which carry the sometimes fragile and sometimes fearless voice of Simone Aubert. The
lyrics are as much invocations to the rallying of the collective conscience as exutory cries
pushed far into the forest. On Otium, Tout Bleu elaborates its pieces like Circe the magician
distils and mixes drugs and poisons. A piercing reflection of our decayed time, Otium appears
as a pain and its remedy at the same time.