colleen

First things first, a weeks ago I finally finished my sixth album, and the next day when I doublechecked everything for the last time, I had the joy of receiving my vinyl copies of the Record Store Day reissues of my second and third albums and music box EP! Now that’s the kind of coincidence that brings a lot of joy!

Although by now I should be familiar with the “mixing-takes-forever” experience, it still always takes me by surprise:  I think I’ve *almost* finished a record (that was me a month and a half ago), and it turns out there’s still so much to do to take it to the level where I feel comfortable putting it out in the world. Doing this all by myself means it can be hard to have the necessary critical distance with the purely audio aspect of the music, especially when I’ve been recording for months, but last week I finally reached the happy stage of thinking “This one is ready”!

To celebrate the upcoming reissues of my past work, I’ve decided to do a series of short posts about those records this week, for those of you who have found out about my music only recently and are not too familiar with my previous output. It’s also nice for me to revisit the context in which those records were made after all those years.

Starting with…The Golden Morning Breaks, 2005, The Leaf Label, golden vinyl edition for Record Store Day, 22 April

I’ve been interested in visual arts for many years (in high school I seriously considered studying art history) and one of the things that interests me most when reading books focusing on a single visual artist is seeing their evolution, and how almost everyone begins by working in the current “fashionable” style, gradually evolving to more personal and mature work – but it’s the idea of every step being necessary and leading to the next one that calls my attention.

Looking back at my own discographical output, I can see that sampling records on my first album Everyone Alive Wants Answers was what I needed to shift from a pop/rock/experimental guitar-player approach to a more open, genreless style of instrumental music. However, when the time came to make a second album, spending hours listening to other people’s records in order to find a few seconds to sample did not appeal to me anymore; reading an article in The Wire on Lou Harrison was pivotal in that respect – I wanted to make my *own* sounds too, and became obsessed with musical instruments, visiting every single musical instrument museum I could go to.  I had also begun to perform live and had taken my classical guitar out of storage and begun to play it again with the help of a newly purchased Boss RC20 Loopstation.

The combination of that simple step of beginning to sample my own instrument and having income of my own for the first time of my life (I’d become a teacher) paved the way for all the rest: I started to buy more pedals to further sample and delay my sounds, and more instruments, deciding I could play whatever I felt like playing, even if I’d never touched any of them: music boxes, glockenspiel, toy gamelan, toy synth, ukulele, zither and – crucially –  my first cello, a sorry plywood ¾ thing that I only kept a few months before I bought a proper full size cello. I was also lucky to have a good friend in musician /broadcaster John Cavanagh, in whose home I had the privilege of recording a rare 19^th instrument, the glass harmonicon. Even the wooden recorder of the dreaded mandatory music classes in French “college” made an appearance (Français de mon âge qui lisez ceci, je pense que vous aussi vous aurez des souvenirs merveilleux de ces leçons de musique au collège… ah ces fausses notes à la flute…). I recorded the album in the living room of my new flat in Paris, with extremely crude gear and an even cruder recording technique, but somehow, I really love the sound of that album, and have a lot of affection for it because of all it represents for me.

Finally, you can catch the performance I gave at the Standard on 26^th March as part of the incredibly curated and wonderfully managed Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee via Red Bull Radio today  at 4 pm EDT /10 pm CEST or catch the replays on Wednesday, 4/19 11AM EDT and Saturday, 4/22 1:45PM EDT.

I spent an incredible 4 days at the festival, managing to catch quite a few performances and squeezing in 2 very rewarding half-days of birdwatching – my ideal way of attending a festival as a performer: time to also be a member of the audience, discover the area, its people and its fauna ;-)))

By the Sunday evening, as the festival drew to a close and the time came for me to perform my second concert, I was feeling super relaxed, and thought “At least this concert is not recorded for TV or radio, so I can talk between songs as much as I want!

Indeed, when I know that a concert is being broadcast, I tend to restrict myself in terms of talking between songs – talking or not is always something I decide on the spur of the moment, based on length of time allocated for the show, the atmosphere, etc… but in general I tend to avoid talking when I know that there’s a recorder or camera rolling, as it feels a little more “constricting”.

Anyway, here I was, convinced that it was my first performance (at The Mill and Mine) that had been recorded for both Aurora TV *and* Red Bull Radio… During my soundcheck at the Standard no one from Red Bull came to say anything, so I just proceeded with the concert and had such a good time and … talked a lot! ;-))) Well, *that* was the performance that got recorded by Red Bull Radio, so if you listen to this show you’ll hear me in one of my most talkative moods! ;-) There are a few issues soundwise (for some reason the bass tends to generate a buzz, something I heard as I played, and that did not happen during soundcheck… such a classic) but on the whole I really like the feel of this concert – there’s nothing like playing live and feeling happily connected to the music and the audience!

Thanks ever so much again to all the lovely people at Big Ears in both the audience and in the organisation, and to Red Bull Radio for recording this!

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee, a festival with a truly amazing lineup, where I’m playing two shows on Friday 24^th March at the Mill and Mine  and Sunday 26^th at the Standard, plus a participation in a panel on Sunday morning! The 24^th March show will be available to see via live streaming on Aurora here.

I’m also delighted to let you know that I’ll be playing at Moogfest on May 20^th, where I will also give my first ever workshop – details on the workshop’s contents and how to sign up  will be made available in early April. Before that I’ll hit San Diego at UCSD on May 18^th, so this will be quite a trip!

But apart from these live shows news,  I’m beyond excited to let you know that The Leaf Label are issuing for the first time on vinyl my special EP from 2006 Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique and are reissuing my long out of print The Golden Morning Breaks and Les Ondes Silencieuses for Record Store Day on 22nd April! For the first time my entire discographical output will be available on vinyl, and that means a lot to me. The Boîtes EP features new and truly stunning artwork from my partner in life and in art Iker Spozio, and all three releases are on coloured vinyl limited to 750 copies each: silver for the Boîtes EP, gold for The Golden Morning Breaks, and transparent for Les Ondes Silencieuses. They will be available on Record Store Day through participating shops in the UK, North America, France, Germany, Benelux and Italy.

PS1: A little birdie tells me that if you really prefer your vinyl on the black side, there is a possibility that Leaf might repress this on black vinyl later…

PS2: talking of coloured vs black vinyl, lighter colours are supposed to sound better than more opaque ones, so my colour choices are both aesthetic and acoustic. The test pressings by Optimal sounded really great so I trust that these vinyls will not only look beautiful but even more importantly *sound* beautiful.

I’m delighted to announce that you can now purchase my first three albums and the Boîtes à Musique EP released on The Leaf Label on my Bandcamp: digital of course, but also CDs of all four records (including a specially-priced bundle), and black vinyl and a few *white* vinyl copies of my first album Everyone Alive Wants Answers in the Leaf reissue of this year. And talking of vinyl, if all goes to plan, I should have more great news for next year!

On a seemingly unrelated note (but there *is* a relation: what nurtures my life nurtures my music ;-), Plateau on plateau, a new online platform that invites  artists to talk about their favorite things, asked me to write about something I really care about, and I felt it would be the ideal place to write about my passion for birdwatching. I’ve written tiny bits here and there about some of the birdwatching I’ve done while on tour, but I had never had the chance to try and articulate what it is about watching birds that feels so deeply special to me, so here goes! It even includes tips for beginning birdwatchers at the end, so now you can all ask for a pair of binoculars and a good bird guide for Christmas! ;-))) I’m leaving you with a picture of one of my absolute favorite birds, taken by the company I used in Lisbon on a great half-day of birdwatching I had while I was there for my last show in 2015, Birds.pt… this photo has actually been my desktop photo ever since then, I’m that much in love with them… please meet the incredible bee-eaters :-)))

I’m so so thrilled and excited to let you know that I’ll be playing at Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, next March! In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited about playing at a festival: look at the line up and you’ll see why, it’s definitely one of the best festival line-ups I’ve ever seen!

When I heard about the festival about a year and a half ago and saw the previous editions’ line-ups, I immediately thought “Wouldn’t it be amazing if they invited me?”, so when it actually happened this summer I just couldn’t believe it! It’ll be a hell of a long trip (I’m calculating something like 24 hours: coach to airport + internal European flight + transatlantic flight + immigration and customs + internal US flight + transfer to Knoxville), but I felt I just couldn’t turn it down due to the amazing quality of the festival, and indeed I feel  so honoured to play along musicians who are among the best of their respective generation and who for some have even made history with their recordings! I’m not only looking forward to playing but also catching as many of the other performances as possible and of course I’ll throw in a bit of Tennessee birdwatching! ;-))))

I’m leaving you with a short video edit of my performance last weekend in Montpellier at the Internationales de la Guitare festival in a beautiful space called La Nef (thank you Vassilis Spyrou for this video!). I was really ill with rhinopharyngitis and a couple of hours before the performance was still wondering if I was going to be able to make it, as I was barely able to sing, and I can say that without a doubt I had never performed while feeling so ill, but somehow I made it and even managed to have a good time thanks to the lovely audience – merci gens de Montpellier et d’ailleurs! ;-)))

This year seems to be full of birthdays and anniversaries for me:  I turned 40 in May, and this September marks not only 25 years of music-making for me, but also 10 years of only dedicating myself to music on a professional level!

25 years ago, at the age of 15, just as I was beginning high school,  I managed to convince my parents to buy me a classical guitar – THIS guitar which you see below, and can hear on my second, third and fourth albums. I had been in love with the Beatles for about 2 years and that summer of 1991, I saw two guys in Copenhagen doing cover versions of the Beatles on an acoustic guitar. I’d never seen anyone play live and I was fascinated, I literally could have stayed there forever, and on that day I KNEW that I needed to do this too.

I don’t think it occurred to me that I could make my own music, and yet that’s what happened right from the start. I took classical guitar lessons, but my teacher also gave electric guitar lessons and the day I heard another pupil playing electric guitar, I knew that I wanted to have a go at it too!

With those two guitars began a long musical journey,  and I’m amazed and grateful that I’ve managed to keep making music for so long, and hope that this journey will continue for many more years to come!

But this September also marks another anniversary: 10 years of becoming a full-time musician. From 2002 to 2006, I taught English in a high-school, and in early 2006 I asked for a one-year sabbatical in order to dedicate myself to music fully, at least for that short amount of time.  It was initially refused, then granted at the last minute in late August 2006, and I remember literally jumping all over the place when I got the news. Had it not been granted,  I’ll never know if I would have had the guts to resign there and then, but something tells me that I may have, as my situation made no sense (I was getting so many live offers and had to turn down almost all of them, and I ended up doing surreal things like going to play in LA on a weekend and coming back to Paris to teach on a Tuesday morning…).

In June 2007 the Ministry refused to renew the sabbatical (theoretically you’re allowed up to 3 years in a row), so I officially resigned, since I was left with no other alternative than this drastic choice. Ironically enough, it was shortly after all this that I started to feel overwhelmed by some aspects of being a professional musician (some of you may remember my epic posts about this, back when I was still deep in my music-making hiatus). Truth be told, some things haven’t changed and I still feel the need to slow down regularly, but I’m also happy to say that some things have changed for the better: having a very supportive label like Thrill Jockey has really helped, and also gaining a sense of perspective thanks to the passing of time and the many talks I’ve had with other musicians and other creative artists, and seeing that basically we all struggle more or less with the same issues.

In any case, I’d like to end this post by saying that it really bugs me that we live in a society where the possibility of making a living out of your passion is not emphasized more often: now I’m not saying that it’s an easy path and that anybody can be successful at it, but I truly think that few things beat being able to spend your life working on something you feel really passionate about, and it’s *always* worth a try. For me it’s been music, but with the other passions I have in my non-music-making life (it was cooking and ceramics at one point, and now it’s birdwatching, sewing and yoga), I do see that many other individuals are “making a living” from their own passion. In July I went on a cetacean-watching boat trip, and to think that there are people who spend their life on a boat looking for and studying dolphins and whales, about 2 hours from where I live … now that just blows my mind! So YES to dreams and making them real! :-)))

As always, thanks to YOU for being there to listen to my music and reading my words! :-))) And thank you Isabel Dublang for the beautiful pictures!