colleen

20 YEARS OF COLLEEN: Everyone Alive Wants Answers is 19 years old today.
This year I’m celebrating (well, kind of 😂) 20 years of making music as Colleen and I was going to write a post for each one of my albums on their respective anniversary dates, which happen to be almost systematically in the spring, but a big health scare got in the way and I had to step away from social media for a bit.
So am starting now with my first album, released 19 years ago today, the one that literally changed my life. I worked on it throughout 2002, my first year of teaching English full time in a lycée in the Parisian suburb of Poissy. I had no clue this was the start of something real and different from what I had anticipated for myself in my life. Sent it to various labels, only one of which replied positively, The Leaf Label, which subsequently released my second and third albums and my music box EP.

It is very unfortunate that my relationship with the label was damaged beyond repair through unethical behaviour in terms of accounting and payment, because I do think the label did a great job of distributing and promoting my music internationally, which in turn enabled me to tour almost worldwide.
The record was based on samples taken from my own collection of records or from the CDs I borrowed like a maniac from the Paris médiathèques, with the exception of “A swimming pool down the railway track” which features a 1994/5 recording of the Bontempi organ I got as a kid. Everything sampled in Soundforge (pre-Burial style haha) and assembled in Acid (which I was still using until last month!) on a massive PC I’d initially bought to write my master’s thesis. In the 17m2 studio flat in which I lived in Paris. The opening title track would definitely be in my 5 favorite Colleen songs if I had to choose.
Some black and white vinyl copies are still available from the Thrill Jockey shop (copies shipping from the US too in a few days).

The Leaf Label last represses

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