colleen

another rare opportunity to see “while we are here”, the film by makino takashi for which i composed music back in 2009: it will be screened in london on 21st november 2011 at apiary studio, along other works by makino featuring exclusive scores by jim o’rourke and tara jane o’neill.

all the info is here

For those of you living in Montreal, a rare opportunity to see the  beautiful short art film by Japanese film-maker Makino Takashi for which I made 16 minutes of exclusive music back in 2009. Screening at the Cinémathèque québécoise on 6^th October 2011 at 6.30 pm, as part of their Japanese cinema month.

At last, I’ve finished writing “my favourite music 2006-2010” in the “my favorite things” section and just posted it…

I’m very much a “list person”,  but writing this particular list did seem slightly more insane than previously, because I listened to so much music these past few years, and given the sheer quantity of great music that’s out there, it’s just easy to forget about certain records, so I tried to make sure I included everything, and relistened to many of those records, which is why it took me forever to get the list together :-) !

It is definitely the best thing about making those lists though: I look at them, see the name of a record I may have not listened to in two or three years, and on it goes in the cd or vinyl player…

I hope the list will lead you to some nice discoveries too, and next time I won’t let 4 years elapse before making another one !

I’ll go on in French as this is mostly for those of you who speak French.

Cette semaine j’ai eu le plaisir de m’entretenir longuement avec Richard Robert, qui a longtemps travaillé aux Inrockuptibles (où parurent deux articles sur ma musique signés de sa main) et qui a créé une revue musicale en ligne, l’Oreille absolue, dont le propos est de « redonner la parole aux musiciens » : on y trouve donc  de nombreux entretiens, tous très approfondis, avec des musiciens de tous horizons, et le site forme au final une impressionnante « base de données » d’entretiens, un must pour les amoureux de la musique, à mon avis…  Dans cet entretien-fleuve je reviens sur mon expérience de ces quelques dernières années,  c’est mon premier entretien depuis bien longtemps et je suis ravie qu’il ait eu lieu hors du terrain de la « promotion » d’un nouveau disque, et qu’il soit sur des choses plus permanentes et essentielles…

l’article est ici

STOPPING THE WHEEL

Of course, I knew that the only master on board was myself and that if I thought this was too much, I should just slow down, or even stop – which I eventually did, but it took me time: it’s not easy to say no to great offers, so you often just keep doing things because it seems a shame to turn them down. In a way, I guess the self-managed musician is very much like the small entrepreneur or craftsman, who puts in crazy hours not necessarily out of financial necessity or solely out of passion, but because that’s the very dynamic generated by being independent : if you’re successful at what you do, the demand gets stronger and stronger, and while a small entrepreneur can hire more people to help him, there is no substitute for me actually being on a stage – even if I get a roadie or some other person to help me, at the end of the day I either do the gig or I don’t, there is no real middle way. « Read the rest of this entry »