colleen

Another live excerpt from the full live show you can see on Youtube from my concert at Sala del Paradiso, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Firenze, Italy, given last month, for @museofirenze and @musicusconcentus .
Headphones or amp recommended.

“Les parenthèses enchantées – Movement I” was one of the first songs I finished for Le jour et la nuit du réel, at the stage right before fully diving into the depths of synthesis. It bears its Satie influence on its sleeve, but is also a close cousin of the songs on my second album, 2005’s The Golden Morning Breaks. Whenever I play it live, I immediately feel such a shift in energy, in the sense that it totally calms me down and could even put me to sleep – in the best possible way – if I wasn’t actually the one playing it. 
The 2 hiccups that happen at 3’12” are typical of moments where I get lost in the music and the performance to the point of losing awareness of the moves my hands are doing for me: it’s a feeling both beautiful and dizzying and is typically for me a moment when these small incidents might happen. I guess that if I was classically or formally trained, I might find a way of better controlling this, but as I’m not, it is what it is and I have finally learnt to accept these moments as part of the performance.
The song uses what I call my “Rhodes sound” on the Moog Grandmother: the Lowpass Filter is used as a Sinewave oscillator (for this, Resonance needs to be set at full and the Kbd Track set to 1:1), pitch being determined Cutoff frequency. Envelope Release set at 12 pm and a little bit of Spring Reverb. Sent by Aux into the Space Echo (the real thing in the studio, my @soundgasltd Roland RE-201 Space Echo, or the pedal version live, the BOSS RE-20). Both gently panned Left and Right.

Adapted from the message I sent to my Bandcamp followers today – I send a message to my followers every month – if you would like to join, head over here :-)

Dear everyone

It’s another Bandcamp Friday.

As most of you know, 11 months ago, I started selling “Conditional”,  a song I made for Moog, on my Bandcamp. I decided to give all the proceeds to an animal shelter in Colombia, Peluditos con Mucho Amor, also decided that I would do this in perpetuity, then added more songs to this initiative (they are clearly marked FOR ANIMAL SHELTERS).

Thanks to your generosity I’ve been able to send more than 1700$  to 11 organizations working directly to save animals. 

Today is Bandcamp Friday and I am still collecting for Hogaramordegalgos, based in Buenos Aires (pic below of some of their dogs). After that, I will probably stop selecting an organization in advance, as fundraising in general is hard and it is difficult for a small-scale project like this to not lose steam.

I started writing a more personal text today, but think I will publish it later on – or perhaps not at all. Sometimes I am not sure if I am oversharing my thoughts and feelings.

In any case, I wanted to let you know that this week marks a big turning point for me:  on Monday I started volunteering at SOS Galgos here in Barcelona (we sent them almost 250$!). The plan is that I will go once a week, every week. Below a pic of beautiful Luna and Suri, hiding from the rain downpour we had on that day (Luna, the one at the bottom of the pic, as adopted this week, along with several other galgos and a podenco, so it’s been a beautiful week for the shelter!).

I would like to repeat my deepest thank yous to all those of you who have donated, but also to those who haven’t, since these decisions can take a lot of time. Sometimes, a commitment that’s slower to materialize can be deeper too. In a way I feel that this is what has happened to me, since it took me a long time to take action.

Sending you all a big hug

Cécile

PS: regarding physical releases, my Bandcamp still only sends from the US as it is maintained by Thrill Jockey in Chicago, but we now have a new official partner in Europe, Anost, in Germany, and they have all my albums in stock.

And new shows later this year in London and Brighton, with London being a special one as I will play special extended set of Le jour et la nuit du réel with never before played versions!

01 11 Baba Yaga’s Hut at Grand Junction – LONDON, UK

02 11 – Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts – BRIGHTON, UK

It took me a bit of time to share the concert I gave at the stunning Sala del Paradiso of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Firenze, Italy, on 4th April, as there was a technical issue with the sound recording, so I needed to get used to the idea of sharing this with the only sound source available, a miraculously clean recording from the side camera. This does mean that there is no audio from the mixing desk (my gear), nor from the ambiant microphones that were set up in the room – this is just room sound next to one of the speakers (the one with the most delay too), so there is a lot of reverb and very little stereo. Such is life sometimes. I do hope you enjoy it.

Full video below on the Museo’s Youtube channel

NEXT SHOWS
01 05 Les Nuits Botaniques @botanique_bxl BRUSSELS, BE
21 05 Opéra Underground @operadelyon – LYON, FR 
30 05 St George’s – BRISTOL, UK @stgeorgesbris
01 11 Grand Junction / Baba Yaga’s Hut  – LONDON, UK @grandjunctionw2 @babayagashutlondon
02 11 Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts – BRIGHTON, UK @attenboroughctr

BANDCAMP FOR ANIMAL SHELTERS
This month supporting @hogaramordegalgo in Buenos Aires
So much work to be done, so in awe of the people behind this, so moved by the way these animals recover from the worst, and also sometimes don’t…
100% of what you give on my Bandcamp for the songs marked FOR ANIMAL SHELTERS go to the selected organization of the month.
 for your donations, Silvana and team @hogaramordegalgo and @galgo.libre for rescuing so many dogs.

Dear everyone 

Back from a dream-like concert in the incredible setting of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Firenze, Italy, yesterday… Should be able to show you more about this show soon, I put up this short video snippet as a reel and in the meantime I’ll be putting up stories today on my Instagram (remember I also archive these, so you can always find them later).

So… a little late for my now traditional Bandcamp for animal shelters fundraising initiative, because it’s not easy to travel AND fundraise at the same time – last BC Friday was also on a return day from a show, which is why I even missed it completely.

We still have about 17 hours left to support our friends the galgos (Spanish greyhounds), but this time in the Buenos Aires area. A quick look at Hogaramordegalgo will give you the very sad information that galgos have it just as bad over there as in Spain, and just as in Spain, galgo rescue organizations are desperate for funds because they not only have to rescue a lot of galgos, those dogs also come in terrible conditions, sometimes to the point of not making it alive, and so vet expenses are huge. 

You can find the songs and EPs that are part of this project exclusively on Bandcamp HERE (they are clearly marked as FOR ANIMAL SHELTERS), I will donate 100% of what you give, even if you give once Bandcamp Friday is over.

Once again, please feel free to see this project as an invitation to donate directly  (even 1$ will end up making a difference if many of us join) and to spread the word about these particular dogs, the situation faced by independent shelters (which in most places are the only organizations doing anything, since official shelters are also full to the brim) and the importance of adopting, not buying. 

With much gratitude

Cécile