colleen

Of my three albums for Leaf, this is the one I feel closest to, perhaps because it taught me that I could just choose to do anything if I really wanted to – in this particular instance, playing about 10 different instruments on an album, all self-taught except for the guitar.  Three combined factors led me to abandoning sampling: when the time came to play live, I just could not imagine myself with a computer or just a sampler on stage; sampling had become joyless/stale as a method for making a second album (I immediately saw it wasn’t working anymore); and last but not least, having become a teacher, I finally had a proper income for the first time in my life, which enabled me to move from a 17m2  studio to a 40m2  one-bedroom flat – the pinnacle of luxury for a young person in Paris! – and which led to my I-am-going-to-buy-any-instrument-I-can-lay-my-hands-on -no-matter-how-small-or-shitty period, which lasted for about two years. I also acquired the pedals which proved crucial to my live shows for many years (the Boss Loopstation in its early incarnation, the Line6 DL4, and the Akai Headrush).

One of my acquisitions was a super cheap Casio AS67, which had one decent tone only, and that’s the one I used as the basis for “The happy sea”, run through a pretty extreme plugin (I can’t remember which one, but it’s responsible for the almost wah-wah quality of the organ sound), and on top I played a newly-acquired glockenspiel and – salvaged from my childhood – a wooden recorder (lecteurs français de ma génération, je sais que vous aussi vous avez tous eu une flute! J). To this day there’s still something in this song that makes me feel really happy, perhaps it was a premonition that I would one day live by the sea :-)))

This album has been reissued on coloured and black vinyl by The Leaf Label this year (available through my Bandcamp)  and will be released on tape for the first time on 14^th October  on Beacon Sound (EU customers can order through my Bandcamp, non-EU customers please head over directly to Beacon Sound’s website here).

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