colleen

Dear everyone

These past 2 days have been a whirlwind of announcements and tying the last bits of so many things, I am used to this considering it’s my 9th album, but this time it’s even more intense as I’m in charge of booking my live shows from start to finish. In any case, I am super glad to feel like there’s some action going on after so many months! You will see this newsletter a bit more often from now on, but I hope that like me you rejoice about it :-)))

So, without further ado…

SECOND SINGLE FROM THE NEW ALBUM!

“Mis armas se habían caído al suelo” (My weapons had fallen to the floor) is a declaration of vulnerability, acting as a prologue to what I consider to be the most musically dense and emotionally intense album of my discography. To arrive at its simplicity, brevity and the sonar- like insistence of its first melodic notes, it took me a lot of detours: a totally different song was initially meant to be the opening track, one of the very first I worked on when I started to get acquainted with the Moog Matriarch. I put it aside to keep experimenting and composing, but once I finally completed the rest of the album, I couldn’t help but notice that this first song now sat incongruously along the rest of the material.

“I finally decided to ditch it completely and re-approach the meaning of the words of the title from a different musical perspective: what would metaphorically “putting down my weapons” actually sound like, the peculiar mixture of fear, hope and surrender? I realized that the musical answer lay in a combination of extreme simplicity through three insistent chords and a melodic line acting as a voice that reaches from the abyss and comes up to the surface to stutter, wonder, hesitate, then slowly give in.”

FIRST FLOOR: COLLEEN HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO

I was invited by one of the few voices I trust on music industry-related issues, Shawn Reynaldo, who runs the excellent First Floor newsletter, to contribute to his “X has better taste than I do”, where he asks a musician to select a favorite record. I will let you head to the article to find what I selected, and can only recommend you to suscribe to the First Floor Substack, as Shawn writes not only eloquently and elegantly, but also delves deep into numerous important subjects and does not shy away from looking into rarely discussed topics like ethics in the music industry. Insta post here.

Dear everyone

Another bilingual post to let you know I will have the great pleasure of celebrating the release of Libres antes del final on 20th March in Paris, the city where everything started for me!

Here is the text I wrote in French to contextualize what the city means for me, and also the topics I hope we will talk about during the Q and A :-)

“J’ai vécu à Paris de 1999 à 2010, des années charnières pour moi. En 2000 je commence à sampler les CDs que j’emprunte assidûment à la Bibliothèque Buffon, pratique que je complémente par des visites fréquentes chez Gibert Joseph situé juste à côté de ma fac d’anglais et l’écoute des radios locales, tout en allant à de nombreux concerts de tous types. Le projet Colleen est né ici et s’y est développé, et Paris restera pour moi toujours associé à l’émoi de ces premières années ultra denses où j’ai créé 3 albums et répété pour des dizaines de concerts à l’étranger tout en étant prof d’anglais en banlieue, puis vécu les hauts et les bas de mon passage au statut de musicienne à temps plein.

C’est donc avec un immense plaisir et un goût de retour aux origines que je viens présenter mon 9ème album, Libres antes del final, chez Café Comets, le jour de sa sortie.

Au delà de l’écoute du disque ensemble, j’espère pouvoir passer un vrai moment de dialogue avec vous. Si vous suivez mon parcours depuis un certain temps, vous saurez que j’aime particulièrement aborder les multiples sujets qui font le “tout” d’une carrière artistique, depuis des aspects pûrement créatifs et même techniques, jusqu’à des thèmes moins évoqués et pourtant essentiels: le difficile équilibre vie privée-vie professionnelle lorsque notre passion devient notre métier, le risque réel de burnout et ses causes, les stratégies possibles à mettre en place pour arriver à vivre de la musique, l’esprit DIY, les sacrifices nécessaires, les fausses bonnes idées, bref tout ce dont on ne parle presque jamais publiquement mais qui conditionne en arrière-plan la pérénnité de l’acte créatif.”

“NIGHT LOOPING – MOVEMENT III” IN PJ HARVEY’S END OF YEAR PLAYLIST!

On 1st January, I had the immense surprise and pleasure of seeing the closing track of my last album, Le jour et la nuit du réel, in a playlist that PJ Harvey shared on 31st December 2025, “of music I’ve been listening to this year and that I have found inspiring and strengthening.”

I deeply admire Harvey’s work and trajectory, and she was actually the first female artist that I looked up to as a teenager (we’re talking 1992-94) because you could really count on the fingers of one hand women who made music in such a fierce and “self-sufficient” way (I’ll use that terms as it’s the only one coming to me now, I do think you’ll know what I mean – I was especially a fan of the 4-Track Demos for that reason). Her path since White Chalk has left me in awe and has deeply inspired me, as it is proof you can become more daring and constantly reinvent yourself without fitting into any molds as you age.

You can find the full playlist on her website and Instagram and listen to it on Spotify and Youtube.

Dear everyone, I am so happy to finally be able to announce this double show in my beloved adopted city of Barcelona, on Sunday 26th April, organized by Foggy Hext, at Casa Montjuic and its sister club nextdoors Laut, info and tickets here :-)))

If you are not sure which one to go to, here is extra info to help you choose:

TIMES

CM: doors at 6 pm with exquisite DJ set by Taki Onqoi of Foggy Hex, my show starts at 7 pm for 1h15

Laut: doors at 8.50 pm, mix by yours truly to put you in the right mood, my shows starts at 9:30 for 1h15, and we close the night with Francisco Sosa’s elegant and danceable modular set

MOOD

Casa Montjuic: seated, listening experience really close to the album’s sound since I reamped the album with sound engineer Oswaldo Terrones (more about this below)

Laut: standing, with me in the middle of the room, to allow you to move to the sound of the music.

Here is a text I wrote in Spanish about why this feels so special to me :-)

“Hace 20 años, el 10 de febrero 2006, daba mi primer concierto en Barcelona, en el Mercat de las Flors, en lo que era tambien mi primera visita a la ciudad. Nunca hubiera podido adivinar que me mudaría aqui 13 años despues, coincidiendo con un intenso cambio personal y artístico. He encontrado en Barcelona un lugar perfecto para esta evolución: Libres antes del final es ya el tercer albúm que hago en mi pequeño home studio aqui, y sin duda es el disco que más porta la imprenta de la ciudad. Nació en conexión con la decisión de reaprender a nadar, pero en el mar, y es un paso más en mi amor por la síntesis, el proceso creativo que ha literalmente cambiado mi manera de hacer musica, y estando aqui me he podido nutrir de la fértil y generosa escena de síntesis modular local. Reamplificar el disco en mi sala favorita, Casa Montjuic, con el ingeniero de sonido Oswaldo Terrones, fue una manera potente de cerrar y celebrar el vínculo con la ciudad.

Por todos aquellos motivos, me emociona de verdad presentar este disco en directo aqui, en Casa Montjuic y Laut, mano en mano con Foggy Hex, que han organizado algunos de mis conciertos favoritos a lo largo de estos años de vida aqui.”

REAMPING SESSION OF LIBRES ANTES DEL FINAL IN CASA MONTJUIC, BARCELONA, WITH OSWALDO TERRONES, OCTOBER 19th 2025: PHOTOS BY MORGIANE REBOUH

And here are – at last – some photos taken by Morgiane Rebouh of the reamping session we did with sound engineer Oswaldo Terrones back on October 19th, which I shared on Instagram shortly afterwards, then did not upload here as I unfortunately went through a period of intense stress which took a toll on my ability to promote the album, and which fortunately has now ended, so now that I have announced the show at Casa Montjuic and I have recovered my spirits, it is the perfect time to do so :-)

On 19th October Mexican sound engineer Oswaldo Terrones came from Lisbon to reamp the album in an 8-hour-long work session at Casa Montjuic. Here are the questions I got asked the most whenever I mentioned this to people: What is reamping in an album context (people have often heard about it, but just for guitars)? What is the point? Wait, this is a venue, so you took your synth and played it live?
No, reamping is really about taking previously recorded sounds or entire pieces of music, amplifying them (in this case, using Casa Montjuic’s PA), placing microphones chosen for their sonic characteristics in the most appropriate spots of the room, and capturing the final results. What you get is the original music augmented by the PA + room acoustics + the microphones’ tonal characteristics.
The star of that day was without a doubt the famous Neumann KU100 binaural head, affectionately known as Fritz, and that first photo makes me smile a lot as it looks a little bit as if Fritz had just whispered something shocking into my ears.

Dear everyone

Here is another excerpt from “Antídoto” live @elevatorsound_eu back on May 10th of last year, this time a technical breakdown of the middle section, 100% @moogsynthesizers Matriarch, I hope you will like it, any questions feel free to ask in the Youtube comments section :-)
You can see the full video of “Antídoto” here and the full Matriarch Deep Dive workshop I gave in Spanish will be available next month on Elevator Sound’s Youtube channel.

Also, a reminder that Libres antes del final, my 9th album, is out on 20th March on @thrilljockey.
Today is Bandcamp Friday, so a good day to preorder the album if you are ok with shipping from the US – same for Thrill Jockey shop orders.
If you want your order to be shipped from Germany or the UK, please choose Anost and Norman Records respectively – this is the best way to support us directly.

And no active fundraising today, for reasons I explained in my Bandcamp newsletter today, but if you feel like giving, rest assured that your donation will be taken into account and donated later on :-)))

As always, thank you sooo much for your support, it is more crucial now than ever :-)))
More from me soon with the next single and new live dates!