colleen

Dear everyone, I am very happy to share the dates currently booked for the first half of this year. Not only that, but I will be celebrating my 250th show as Colleen on 20th March in the middle of the Atlantic ocean on Sao Miguel island in the Azores archipelago for@tremorpdl and I find that such an incredible and beautiful coincidence (I mean seriously: what were the chances of a 250th show happening in the middle of the ocean???).

Just as incredible for me is the fact that show #251 will be at one of the very best festivals in the world, @bigearsfestival in Knoxville, TN, on 23rd March.  I played there back in 2017, just at the moment I was finishing my first electronic album, A flame my love, a frequency, and I remember coming back with my creative batteries fully charged by the energy of the festival. I have a feeling that the same thing is going to happen again.
Another show that promises to be super special is the one on 4th April at the spectacular Sala del Paradiso of Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Firenze, Italy: a super rare opportunity to play surrounded by centuries-old sculptures and works of art from the cathedral of one of Italy’s most beautiful cities. This also resonates deeply with me, since stone carving lessons in Paris led me back to music-making in 2010 after a long creative crisis. The event will be streamed live and then archived online, so keep your eyes peeled for more details.
I am also super looking forward to @elevate_festival in Graz tomorrow 29th February, the Nuits Botaniques festival @botanique_bxl in Brussels on 1st May (Belgium was the first foreign country I played in 2003 and it is a country dear to my heart),  Lyon in my native France at the @operadelyon on 21st May, curated by Richard Robert who has supported my work for more than 20 years now, and last but not least a return to my second most played UK city, Bristol, at beautiful @stgeorgesbris on 30th May!
Massive thank you to everyone who contributes in one way or another to these shows happening, from my agents to promoters to venue people and of course you the audience 🙏🙏🙏❤❤❤
🙏🙏🙏 @gomez_servin_andres for the poster

INFO AND TICKET LINKS VIA SONGKICK

REFLECTIONS ON GOING BACK TO TOURING – EPILOGUE: THE FROZEN BRAIN OF THE RABBIT IN THE HEADLIGHTS, OR STILL LOOKING FOR THE WORK-LIFE BALANCE UNICORN.
Allow me to mix my animal metaphors for the closing post of this series.
I am ending with a cautionary tale, or rather the true story of how I completely failed to solve a relatively easy technical problem at the last show in Lisbon @galeriazedosbois . By then I was pretty tired, but also very confident (too confident perhaps?) and when I saw that I would have yet another new mixing desk model on that night, I not only did not particularly worry: I did not check the manual, thinking the Aux Send architecture (which is what’s really important in my live rig) would be the same as in the 6 other desks I used. Wrong. Through a combination of negligence on my part, weird desk architecture and integrated effects, I ended up with an extra delay throughout the show that really messed the rhythm on many songs and totally distracted me. I only solved the issue at the penultimate song.
It took me a full week to come to terms with the fact I had not been able to troubleshoot something obvious and simple, no matter how “unlucky” I’d been. I only managed to forgive myself once I understood the true cause *and* implication of this failure: like a rabbit caught in the headlights, my brain, after what have been several years of non-stop work, and in the extra stress of being on stage, just froze.
I did and do take this episode as a warning of sorts: yes it’s great to play live again, but I still have a tendency to overwork, it’s my default mode, and while it’s in great part what has enabled me to make music for all these years and make a living from it, I know it could end up once again working against me.
This takes me back to the work-life balance unicorn which I had written about at the time I had decided to give up live playing in 2021. It’s still a massive subject for me, one that holds a lot of questioning on how one can value oneself outside of work, even when one is lucky enough to have a true passion in life. The irony is not lost on me that this is yet more “work”, albeit of a different – and essential – kind.

Photos are of the Lisbon show at Galeria Ze Dos Bois on 16^th December 2023: 1-2 by Ricardo Almeida, 3-7 Eros Giuggia. Because the show was sold out and ZDB is very small, I invited the audience to join me on stage, and everybody was sooo kind and patient while I tried to control my mounting stress… I think photo 5 totally captures the moment in which I am looking at the mixing desk and thinking “what the hell could be wrong?”. Extra special thanks to Marçal Xirau, Olga and Caetana for bearing with my neurotic state after the show, and to Marçal for his opening show.

On top of having a clear set of guidelines to help me make decisions on which shows to accept, I have also made a conscious attempt to shift my mindset towards fully accepting that travelling to play shows is *not* an opportunity for sightseeing: yes, it’s amazing when you do get to see the place, but often it just does not happen and you need to make peace with that and learn to enjoy the snippets you do see on your taxi or car ride or the view from your hotel window (I guess it does help that by now I have already at least partially visited  most of the cities I’m playing). Instead, my focus is now on performance, rest/refueling and people (from the venue staff to the audience, from old to new friends, acquaintances and colleagues).
I have also made a point of removing my main anxiety trigger: taxi rides alone at night, especially over long distances. In my 21 years of live playing, I have always been on my own except for a handful of shows and on the whole I can say I’m a well-seasoned traveller (I don’t even notice when the plane takes off). I have been on countless taxi rides, but I had a David Lynch-worthy experience with an Uber driver at night in San Diego in spring 2017, and since then any weird behaviour in a driver puts me on edge. Before someone suggests I ask for a female driver… it *was* a female driver that gave me the scariest ride of my life.
So I really try to avoid car rides at night and I simply don’t do Uber or Lyft. This means I either stay at a hotel within walking distance of the venue OR I need to be guaranteed a ride with someone I can trust OR I stay with friends or kind acquaintances. This worked really well on this last tour and I am so grateful to every single person who has made this possible: as always, a little help can go a long way and make such a huge difference in terms of our felt experience.
Because that’s the thing: sometimes when we want to play less, it’s not at all about the playing, it’s about a very specific aspect of the whole situation that can be legitimately too hard to handle.

Photos from my show in my adopted hometown of Barcelona, L’Auditori, presented by L’Afluent, 14 December 2023, with my beloved Soundgasltd Space Echo that had never sounded so clean and clear!

23 FEBRUARY 2024: ALBUM LISTENING SESSION IN CHIQUITA ROOM, BARCELONA

On 23rd February, we will hold a listening session of Le jour et la nuit du réel at art gallery Chiquita Room in Barcelona and you can book your ticket here. I will be there to present the album, show you the scores and patch sheets so you can see some of my process up close, and we will hold a Q and A afterwards, all in a relaxed and cozy atmosphere! :-))))

REFLECTIONS ON GOING BACK TO TOURING – PART VI: TOURING MY WAY, OR SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE
The ability to accept the two sides of the coin inherent to most life situations is a newfound strength for me, one that allows me to go past my more rigid black-or-white views of the past and see with utter clarity that yes, I do love playing live, yes, travelling for shows has enabled me to see more places and meet more people than I could ever have dreamt of, and yes, live shows are and always will be the only way we have of being present in a room with our audience via what unites us, so that I am now fully re-committed to this in the (hopefully) long run and can act accordingly.
Because a balanced view is the necessary start, but it then needs to be implemented into an equally balanced action plan. In my case, I now fully, unapologetically take into account the specifics of my life and the standards I want. So, given I’m 47, need a lot of rest (always did, but even more now that I’m older and my health is more fragile) and have 2 cats, including one (Sol) that I would describe as “high needs”, the action plan rests on 4 pillars, the first 2 non-negotiable, the last 2 mostly-non-negotiable.
1) Except for the US, where the nature of the territory and its distance from where I live forces me to go in concentrated bursts, I don’t “do touring” the traditional way: I play one-off shows or 2 shows on 2 consecutive days, spread over the year at intervals I consider reasonable (obviously it’d be exhausting if I played one-offs every week).
2) I only play shows I’m really excited about (although sometimes I have to turn down a show because it is just too hard to get there or my plate is already too full). This is made easier by decision 1: traditional touring involves filling gaps, which can mean playing shows you wouldn’t have played otherwise.
3) I don’t play shows in the middle of winter or summer, especially not North in the winter and South in the summer: extreme climatic events are becoming more and more frequent, and it is counter-nature and dangerous to play (or even attend events) in extreme weather conditions.
4) I don’t play outdoors shows – see decision 3.

Pictures are of another favourite concert of last year, @le_guess_who in Utrecht on 11 November 2023 at beautiful Janskerk with amazing lighting, the last ever Le Guess Who show in that church, and I got my first standing ovation – I was so moved 😍

📷🙏🙏🙏❤😍 1,2,5,9 @tristtristanstan; 3,4,6,7,8 @mherlow ;10 @annebakkermusic

COLLEEN BANDCAMP ANIMAL RESCUE INITIATIVE: A LOOK BACK AT WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED IN 8 MONTHS + HELPING @sosgalgos THIS MONTH
It is getting clearer to me each day that the meaning of life is love and empathy in action, and anything we do every day to get to that place is time and energy well-spent: I am so grateful that I started this project last year, and even though it’s a drop in the ocean of helping to relieve animal suffering, I am so glad you have helped me create that drop, and to celebrate it I made a video showing the 9 organizations that I gave 1400$ over the course of the past 8 months.
I also cannot believe how my song “Conditional”, which was originally about making one’s happiness conditional upon getting something or someone, sounds like it could have been written from the point of view of an animal waiting for help and love. I also love that this was originally a commission from Moog to betatest their Moogerfooger plugins: who would have known it would end up being a catalyst for a donation project like this???

Today is Bandcamp Friday, the day that Bandcamp does not charge its 15% commission, therefore an ideal day for all charity projects. This month we are helping galgos (Spanish greyhounds) by donating to Barcelona-based organization @sosgalgos . Yesterday was World Greyhound Day and sadly here in  Spain, this is the month in which galgos and other hunting dogs get abandoned en masse because it is the end of the hunting season.. 

There are now 3 Colleen songs or EPs you can buy on top of “Conditional”: A Flame Variations, Mort aux Vaches and “Organ song 1995”. They are clearly indicated by FOR ANIMAL SHELTERS after the title.
THANK YOU SO MUCH 🙏🙏🙏❤❤❤
All the organizations are tagged in the video on Instagram if you wish to make a direct donation. 🌞 They are: Peluditos con amor, Columbia; Fundación Trifolium, Spain; from Ukraine: Sirius Shelter, Animal Rescue Kharkiv, Shelter Friend Ukraine, Gostomel Shelter and from Germany helping Ukraine: Petners Berlin; from Spain: Fundación Benjamín Mehnert, Huella de Jaen