LONDON AND BERLIN REELS + AQUARIUM DRUNKARD AND ESSENTIAL TREMORS PODCASTS + HHV 10 FAV VINYL
October 29, 2023 § Leave a comment
KINGS PLACE, LONDON, 15 OCTOBER 2023
The UK is where I lived for more than 2 years of my young adulthood (1997-99: Winchester, Liverpool, Salford), it’s obviously very dear to me for musical reasons too, and the show at Kings Place last year cemented my decision to go back to live playing, so it felt tofally right to start the European leg of this tour there. Also, the beautiful symbol of playing in Salford at The White Hotel @m3_7lw , 2.4 miles from where I had moved 25 years previously, at a really rough point of my life, was not lost on me.
So thank you so much to each and everyone of you who came to these 2 shows. Also please know that your kind words, the fact that some of you travelled to see these shows, really means a lot to me.
At Kings Place I was given the luxury of a long show with an interval and it makes so much sense to play the Jour and Nuit sides with a break in the middle. I was able to play “Mon coeur” for the first time (I’ve sacrificed it in the other shows because each movement is so complex to set up, but so short!) , but I ended up not playing “Les parenthèses – Epilogue” because I didn’t see the song in my @squarpinstruments Hapax, and yet afterwards I realized it was there, I just needed to scroll up! Which gives me an opportunity to say how happy I am with it: it’s doing exactly what I needed it to do, and can do so much more!
SILENT GREEN, BERLIN, 20th OCTOBER.
I have been happy at every single show of this tour so far, but some shows end up being more special than others, usually because of a combination of place, sound and audience: the show in Berlin @silent.green last week was one of these for me, I am still carrying its warmth within me.
AQUARIUM DRUNKARD TRANSMISSIONS PODCAST: INDEPTH INTERVIEW ON LE JOUR ET LA NUIT DU RÉEL + ESSENTIAL TREMORS PODCAST + HHV 10 FAV VINYL
It was my immense pleasure to speak to Jason Woodbury @aquariumdrunkard last month about the new album and go really deep and personal into the multifaceted concept behind it and the life events that have informed it. We ended up talking about online vs real life, night time, but also neurodegenerative disease, mental health and suicide. Having now relistened to the podcast, I’m relieved that it doesn’t actually sound grim – more like an opening up about the serious life stuff which can (and often does) end up affecting all of us.
When we spoke in 2021 about my previous album, The Tunnel and the Clearing, we had also gone into some very personal aspects of that album, and I am really grateful to Jason for creating a long form, safe space where his guests can explore this sort of themes at length, without this feeling at any point like a vacuous exercise in promotion.
If you want to know more about the album and are interested in perhaps listening to it in a different, deeper or complementary way, I really invite you to take some time and listen to the podcast in your favorite space, as I don’t think I’ll have many more opportunities to talk about this record in a deeper, more personal way.
I also got the chance to speak about 3 songs that powerfully impacted me at 3 stages of my young life (Lee Perry in early childhood, The Beatles in my early teens and This Heat in my late teens) for the brilliant Essential Tremors podcast. For family reasons, the past year has been full of revisiting my youth, which in turn has led to a reevaluation of what it is that has led me to making music and making it in the way I’ve made it.
In a similar spirit, but in writing this time, I was invited by HHV to talk about 10 vinyl that have shaped, improved and made me.
As always, thank you so much for your support and your time!!!
colleen 