DOS 10:15p / SHOW 11p
21+

As a cello virtuoso at the age of 7, it would have been easy for the ‘Bordelais’ Bertrand to have followed a path of symphony with brain fade, propped up by Prozac for the musical elite. Fortunately, before reaching puberty and seeing his first facial hair he started his first revolution! Finding the power of the electric guitar under the influence of Grunge and pink Floyd he discovered his vocation to make people dance. He left the city of Alain Juppé to join Paris premier school of sound in 98, just in time to admire the hero of the day Zinedine Zidane emblazoned on the arc de triomphe as “Zizou president”. He Graduated from his sonic schooling par excellence! And he works on his first manifesto album mastered at Abbey Road, which was released by Virgin in 2005. He shows he has the talents to be John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr all by himself! In 2007 he followed the calling of the “Axe” and became the guitarist of the band ‘Brooklyn’ who had immediate success at the festival ‘Paris Calling’, alongside ‘Shades’, ‘Plasticines’ or ‘Second Sex’. Too pubescent and full of vivacity! They refused to be moulded into baby rock and tight jeans preferring to take the “maquis” guerrilla rock approach on the road from England to Japan. But -All good things come to an end and in 2010, it is the coolest split in the world: no drama in the dressing rooms and no overdose deaths to deplore!

Free from the band, Bertrand makes his European union with David Shaw. With their club of gentlemen hooligans, DBFC, they resurrect the sound of Manchester with influence from New Order, Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Together, they play non-stop concerts like shots of rum in happy hour all across the globe. By 2018 he is in full touring mode pumped full of cortisone the wheels barley staying on enough to play synth through a haze of strobe lights when he has a vision that his synth is shouting “François Fillon is François Fillon”. For others it would have been a bad trip, for him it’s a revelation: he must engage in ‘Electro-politics’. Dombrance is Born!

Becoming a professor in Pop Science, he reworked the history of French politics, from “Raffarin” to “Poutou”, and from “Trump” to “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”. With the growing success of his campaign, he decided to play in schools to save the youth from a future of politiques! Also launching the program “I’ll play at your house” bringing freedom to the people over lockdown. A bit like when “Giscard D’Estaing” and Anne-Aymone went to dinner with the French people, except that there everyone comes out happy. The curator of Paris electronic festival INASOUND encourages Bertrand to make a stand for France to dance. The “République Électronique” project was born.

While in electro the fashion is to take inspiration from transcendence, Dombrance chooses to take the BPM of History by making an album tracing the mandates of all the presidents of the 5th Republic of France. Let’s be clear this is not a project to showcase pomp and circumstance but an electronic album of sonic political resonance. A Soundtrack that starts with the eponymous track “République Électronique”, with Sarah Rebecca as Marianne. An American voice to remind us that the allies did not just distribute gum. Then comes the martial gravity of “De Gaulle”, the carefree sixties beat of “Pompidou” and its Pierre Henry synths that spin like a DS automobile. It continues with the electro-Minitel of “Mitterrand”, the arrival of techno and raves under “Chirac”, the resistance against the bourgeois French Touch ‘pee of bourgeois’ under the stressful “Sarkozy” years, the neo-disco traumatized by the terrorist attacks and ‘La Manif pour tous’ (The protest for everyone) of “Hollande” …. To finish obviously with “Macron”, a track too fast, like the news that we can no longer follow. Strikes, yellow vests, pandemic, everything ends in a great chaos, transposed into saxophone solo by Laurent Bardainne, ex- Poni Hoax. The echoes of the war that comes before the final fade out. A ‘tour de force’ (display of strength) that reminds that, from the resistant Pierre Schaeffer to Underground Resistance and the raves of today, the history of French Electronic music has always been a political history.

But don’t worry, Dombrance doesn’t want power. He doesn’t have an “intimate ambition” to tell Oprah Winfrey or Karine Lemarchand. He is the eternal candidate who has the good taste to never run for himself. Pour une France qui danse!

Long live “République Électronique”, long live Dombrance!

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