Polo & Pan (Paul Armand-Delille and Alexandre Grynszpan) return with a live performance video of “Requiem,” accompanied by the organist Baptiste Florian Marle Ouvrard, the violinist Ayca Yaren, Leonard le Cloarec on transverse flute, Marc Chouarain on crystal baschet, and Thibault de Montalembert from the hit French comedy-drama, Call My Agent!, as “Monsieur.” The performance is filmed in the home of Marcel Dupré, a famous French organist who had his own organ built in the early 20th century.
 
The film opens with the character of “Monsieur,” a romantic and whimsical dandy who organizes his own funeral, calling on Polo & Pan to play a requiem at the ceremony. Filmed in a sequence, a long traveling shot accompanies “Monsieur” throughout his burlesque crossing of the room. We move backwards very slowly with him, gradually discovering the absurd ceremony that is being prepared.

Director Laurent Ripoll says, “Requiem was for me a wonderful opportunity to attract an audience that is not very sensitive to sacred music, too often perceived as austere, and to raise awareness about the musical emotion that is sacred, before the religious dimension of the music. Church organs are among the most beautiful instruments built by man, and have always fascinated me. Monumental, they seem inaccessible, forbidden, disconnected from musical pleasure. This film would allow me to reconnect with the visual and sound beauty of this instrument, beyond any religious relationship, in a purely emotional and cinematographic approach. The meeting between the contemporary universe of Polo & Pan and the absolute timelessness of the organ had for me only one goal: to raise to the same level, profane and sacred music, and ultimately, to vibrate.”

 
The track is taken from Polo & Pan’s long-awaited sophomore LP Cyclorama, released earlier this year, where they further refine their cinematic impressions on house, disco, club, techno, and psychedelia in arrangements that play out like vignettes, abstractions on the motif of voyage that traverse through locales, time, tempo, and the cycles of life. Cyclorama is Polo & Pan fully realized: hedonism matured, sounds fine-tuned, scope broadened. 

Photo Courtesy: Claire Bernard