colleen

“THE TUNNEL AND THE CLEARING” – PART I – THE TUNNEL

Shot in my studio last week, this is the first part of the song which gives the title to my 7th album and symbolizes for me the entire album and the life experience it retraces. There is no way out but through the tunnel (I apologize that this is dangerously close to a recent Nike slogan I saw in a massive sports shop here in Barcelona). Somehow I can never get to play those staccato chords with utmost regularity, but I try to take a generous view of my shortcomings as a player and see this as a reflection of what it’s like to go through the tunnel: you’re kind of shaking and you’re just doing your best. The gritty sound comes only from the Farfisa emulation of the Yamaha Reface YC combined with the Roland RE-201 Space Echo lovingly overhauled by Soundgas. Nothing else. Space Echo is 100% wet and panned 25% Left against the Farfisa, panned 25% right, to give the whole thing subtle stereo.

“THE TUNNEL AND THE CLEARING” – PART II – THE CLEARING

When I found the first chords to this song, in august 2020, roughly 3 months after starting work on my 7th album, I almost instantaneously got the image of a tunnel and a clearing at the end of it, and realized this would be the title not just of that particular song, but of the whole album.Even though I always work from the ground up through playing my instruments, there is also a more “conceptual” layer to what I do, especially when I’ve been working for several months and material needs to be organized in a coherent whole. From the start and by necessity, the “core” of the album was clearly to reflect the extreme emotions and sensations caused by breakup and the forced changes this brings to one’s life, and for this song, it was clear that the existence of both the tunnel *and* the clearing would have to be translated musically (and in this case without lyrics).

The change from the gritty Farfisa sound to the almost mellotron-like quality of the Hammond through the Space Echo was one way of doing this, sonically. Compositionally, introduce subtle changes to the main theme of the song as exposed in its first part: adding a few notes to a motif, changing the order of those notes, changing one note within a chord, then introducing completely new chords – all meant to be a musical representation of what it’s like to slowly be shifting and expanding your thoughts, and to see the first glimpse of what it might feel like to start feeling better.

When Luis Torroja shot the mini-documentary on my album, we ended with “The Crossing” in darkness, with just a few flashlights and the lights from my machines. Luis was so enthusiastic that he just kept shooting more material based purely on the pulsating lights of the machines and synchronized it to the second part of “The Tunnel and the Clearing”. I can’t think of a more wonderful visual representation of the very real magic of machines and of the love I have for them, as precious tools that allow me not just to make music, but to literally feel better and live a better life. I hope you will enjoy it too.

RETURN OF THE WORK-LIFE BALANCE UNICORN + BARCELONA DOUBLE ALBUM LIVE SHOW 11 MARCH 2021: TICKETS AVAILABLE!!!
This makes me so happy 😃 In May I made the difficult decision to stop playing live. It wasn’t so much about local shows, given that I barely play any, but about international shows, which can be exhausting physically and mentally, especially as you get older. I was also feeling overwhelmed by the “neurological” load of my shows: just looking at all the information I need to process to play live, I got the feeling my brain could not handle something as demanding anymore.
The sense of relief was immediate, but I didn’t expect the following… Given that my London show in August was postponed due to the quarantine rule, I was able to enjoy one of the most relaxed months of *MY ENTIRE LIFE*, in August. It was incredible. Like living with somebody else (at the end of the day, one lives with oneself – it’s obvious, but it took me a really long time to truly get this). So relaxed, that when I decided to rehearse a little to check that I wasn’t forgetting everything, I had a blast. And tried to see if I could still play older songs on the viola da gamba… and had even more of a blast.
Meeting another musician who is very experienced with concerts at a high level and with whom I was able to talk about my situation ended up convincing me that yes, I could go back to playing live, it would “just” have to be in a slightly different way.
What ended up fully convincing me was attending an incredible night on 17th September in El Pumarejo, organized by David aka @furvoice@mutabor_music who will organize and open my own show: I felt such a positive energy and it was there and then that I felt ready for my new decision.
That I was able to switch from thinking “I’m not playing anymore” to preparing shows with 2 totally different setups to play 2 full albums is proof of the power of rest, removing pressure from yourself, and surrounding yourself with good vibrations and people who support you. The work-life balance unicorn, which I’d never seen in my entire life, made its appearance this year, and I consider this a major new step in my life.

Something else that’s beautiful and happened recently…

ON NON MATERIAL PRESENTS: ME AND THE BIBLIOTHEQUE BUFFON, 20 YEARS DOWN THE LINE.
I’ve long been convinced that non material presents, such as time, attention, affection and recognition, are the best presents. I have just received one such present in my inbox. If you look at it and speak a bit of French, you might think: ok, it’s just that her music is among this year’s favorites of the music section of a public library in Paris, so what? So here goes… 

The Bibliothèque Buffon is THE public library where I went every single week, several times a week, from 1999 to 2001, to borrow at least 10 or 15 CDs per week. I can safely say the Colleen project (which will officially turn 20 years old next year) was born in great part thanks to a place like this.
I grew up in a small provincial town and later on, as a penniless student, had to find clever ways of discovering music in a pre/barely-starting internet time. I had 3 options, and I used them all: 1) listening to radio programmes 2) going to music shops (Gibert Joseph was a favorite because it was just next to where I studied English at Sorbonne Nouvelle, and had headphones listening stations with rotating selections every week) 3) borrowing CDs from public libraries. 
I’m not sure how I ended up there the first time – possibly through a friend’s recommendation, possibly because it was next to Jardin des Plantes, another favorite haunt of mine. In any case, from the first visit it was clear this was a veritable Ali Baba cave, and when in 2000 I took up a part-time job at university library BU Censier during my agrégation d’anglais, the Buffon library was literally on my way, which made me increase the frequency of my trips, since I had also started sampling.
That year was pivotal in my life: I understood I would not go into academia, because I wanted to have time for music-making, and borrowing CDs and ripping them for samples was the only luxury I granted myself that year. Hip hop, electronic, minimalist/contemporary, film, Jamaican, African, Indonesian musics, jazz… I could go on and on… I am so, so deeply grateful to see my work, 20 years down the line, among the library’s favourites.

ON GEAR ACQUISITION SYNDROME AND USING MOOGERFOOGERS AS PREAMPS AND DRIVE UNITS.

I am not prone to GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome, for those of you not familiar with the condition). I was very close to Instrument Acquisition Syndrome in the 2000s, but thankfully, square metre shortage in Paris, where I lived back then, ensured that I did not buy 70s organs, or other such space-consuming monsters.Now that I have discovered the joys of analogue instruments, especially vintage ones, I sometimes catch myself wishing for more. But that’s the thing: I catch myself. Knowing full well that with my current setup, truly, I can work for a couple more years at the very least, and not feel limited. If any feeling of limitation were to arise, it would be down to me not spending enough hours with my instruments – one of life’s many unpalatable cold hard truths. I may still buy something if I truly think it will bring something unique to my setup, but at least I’m aware of how desire operates: mostly out of magical thinking, whereby we convince ourselves that once we get this or that instrument/piece of gear, *then* we will make truly incredible music (the next step of magical thinking exists and is as follows: the instruments will make music on their own.)

In the spirit of “let’s not rush to buy a new thing – as wonderful as it may be – when we actually already own something that may serve the same purpose”, I have now clarified for myself the fact that *all* Moogerfoogers can be used as analogue preamps/drive units, *without* the effect they’re intended to provide.Their bypass behavior puzzled me for a long time, as it varies across the pedal range, so testing each one both on and bypassed (as well as re-reading the manuals ) has helped me a lot. Since the question arises in forums, I am publishing the table here in case it is of any help to anyone (my explanations are a little overkill, but that’s just me ). Since my Moog session was meant to celebrate them, there couldn’t be a better time to publish this: discontinued they may be, but their price has risen on the second-hand market, given that yes, they were really special.

ELKA DRUMMER ONE POT CLEANING AND TRANSPLANT.

In July 2020 I had to clean some scratchy pots on my Elka: this involved squeezing a special cleaning liquid called DeoxIT directly into the pot mechanism (as opposed to just spraying something on the outside), which of course meant opening the machine. It was the first time I opened *any* piece of gear, let alone a vintage one, so I was extremely nervous, but totally awed by what I found inside.

At the time, I had to send the Elka back to Soundgas, as the procedure did not work for 2 out of the 4 scratchy pots, which probably meant that the pots had “reached the end of their life”. This enabled me to learn of a new concept and practice “donor machines”: a donor machine is a piece of gear from which you remove parts that are then transplanted, as it were, on another machine. You are basically sacrificing it, piece by piece, for the good of various other machines.

Today’s cleaning operation was successful: 2 out of the 3 scratchy pots are now silent, and scratches appear only occasionally on the bass drum. Unfortunately another small issue has come up: some of you may have seen in my stories that I occasionally have to rescrew pots into their proper position (to have the white mark aligned with minimum volume, which corresponds roughly to a 7 o’clock position) as the pots tend to “slip” out of the knob underneath (they are held by a tiny screw called a grub screw). The knobs themselves function perfectly, but since the white mark gives a vital visual indication of volume, things quickly get confusing if minimum volume is indicated where half or full volume should be.Turns out the reason this keeps happening is that the plastic the pots are made of is becoming brittle with age. Indeed, today I checked this thoroughly, and almost all of the Elka pots are cracked to some extent. Since the 2 pots that have actually caused trouble are on Tom 1 and 2, which I use a lot, I decided to do my own transplant using 2 less used pots (Snare Drum and Cowbell). This seems to have worked for the time being, but Soundgas are working on finding a DIY solution to this problem.

4 years ago I headed to the Moog Soundlab Studio in Asheville, North Carolina, for what remains a highlight of my musical life: doing the session, visiting the Moog factory the next day, and – most unbelievable of all – being gifted the 3 Moogerfoogers I played with for the first time on the day of the session… I have kept this photo (credit: Spencer Kelly) as my profile pic on my social media for the past 4 years, not just because of how awesome that Moog wall looks, but because the glint in my eyes says it all, and I don’t want to forget how special that was and how privileged  I felt.  

The connection with Moog started in 2017, but I had no clue it would ever go this far: I was in love with both the MF-104M delay and MIDIMuRF, and since they made up half of the sound of my 6th album A flame my love, a frequency, I decided to just reach out to say I had just made an album that basically would not have been possible without the Foogers. I had just played Moogfest, which has connections with Moog, but couldn’t assume anything as to whether or not I would get a reaction, and to my amazement, I got a reply, saying that they already knew my work and loved it!

I knew I was going to tour the US in the fall of 2017 to support the album, and since Moog was about to announce that they would discontinue the Moogerfooger line, they asked if I would do a session focusing on these, and that’s how I ended up in front of a beautiful daisy chain of MF-101 Lowpass Filter, MF-102 Ring Modulator, MF-103 12-Stage Phaser, MF-104M delay, and a CP-251 for the last song. Jason Daniello, who heads Artist relations and is a synthetist and Moog specialist, helped me to get some amount of basic familiarity with the Foogers and CP251, and we recorded the whole thing in just a couple of hours, with me playing chords from the songs on my Critter and Guitari Septavox and Pocket Piano as sound sources, just like on the album.

You can listen and download the session for free or pay as you wish on my Bandcamp.

I am super happy to announce that I will be playing@kingsplacelondon , London, on 19th March 2022 TICKETS HERE. This show was initially planned for August 27th and had to be postponed due to the 10-day quarantine rule. I will also play in my adopted hometown of Barcelona on 12th March at one of the best sounding venues I’ve ever had the chance to visit @elpumarejo with @furvoice opening and organizing @mutabor_music.
There is a silver lining to every cloud: the London show postponement not only enabled me to think about and prepare for this show differently, but also go back on my decision to stop live playing, which I had announced– after much hesitation – back in May. I feel the need to announce this already so that none of you decide to do some crazy travelling thinking that this is your last opportunity to see me live. I will write some more about this – it is a subject that has many ramifications for me. For now, all I can say is: I will play more shows, though for sure nothing will happen Stateside until 2023, because of the current visa situation in US embassies.
Regarding these two shows, I am overjoyed that I will get to play not one but two albums for you: I took up my treble viola da gamba, more or less to dust it off rather than with any intention to truly play it, a couple of months ago, and to my surprise realized my playing wasn’t as rusty as I thought, that I could still handle all the foot sampling operation needed to play Captain of None live (I last performed it @moogfest in spring 2017), and – most importantly – that I still absolutely loved playing that album. I really needed to recover brain bandwidth to truly believe that I could handle playing two albums that are totally different in terms of instrumentation and set up, and therefore require a lot of concentration and brain power, and paradoxically, it was my decision to stop playing live and the relief and relaxation it brought that enabled this.