colleen

I’ll be playing at Tokyo’s Miraikan as part of Mutek Japan, and given that I haven’t played in Japan since 2008, it’s an understatement to say I’m excited to go back to a country that had such an influence on me when I first toured there in 2006 (the Japanese minimal/traditional aesthetics is all over my third album Les Ondes Silencieuses from 2007)! More info here https://mutek.jp/artists/2018/09/13/colleen-fr/

The session I recorded back at the Moog Sound Lab in Asheville, NC in November 2017 while on the A flame my love, a frequency tour is now available for listening on Moog Music Inc.‘s Soundcloud! Moog have sadly decided to stop the production of the Moogerfoogers, but I’m honored that they chose the session I recorded as the goodbye to these amazing units!

The music you’ll hear was recorded in a single afternoon, “Winter dawn” using the MF104M Analog Delay and MF105M MIDIMuRF just like on the album, while the four other recordings use the chord sequences from different songs on the album as starting points, revisiting them through a daisychain of MF101 Lowpass Filter, MF102 Ring Modulator, MF103 12-stage phaser and MF104M, with the last song also using the CP251 Control Processor. I absolutely loved exploring even deeper soundscapes through those pedals, and these versions give you a glimpse of what the next album will sound like in part (in part because there will be new intruments!).

As always thanks for listening, and of course a huge thank you to the people at Moog, and a very special thank you too to Iker Spozio for the amazing artwork!

A very short post to let you know I’ve just begun working on new music!

The very early stages of working on a new album are some of my favorite moments in the album-making process: I usually know where I want to be headed, but there is a world of difference between audio daydreaming and tangible sonic reality. So it’s a thrill to install new pieces of gear and get the first feel of how simultaneously challenging and fun the exploration of sound is going to be: everything still needs to be understood in depth, tested in all possible combinations, until slowly, those sonic glimpses start to gel into actual music. This is only part of the setup I intend to use, and there’s already so much to explore in there: whenever I see those 5 Moogerfoogers together, the French expression “brochette de Moogerfoogers” (“Moogerfooger skewer”) comes to my mind!

Have a beautiful summer, even if it’s a rainy one :-)))

Allez, une fois n’est pas coutume, un post en Français, pour vous rappeler que je joue à Lyon au Transbordeur à 20h30 ce jeudi 10 mai dans le cadre du très électronique Nuits Sonores – le genre de festival que je n’aurais très certainement pas fait avant de sortir un album entièrement électronique (je vous laisse imaginer les difficultés d’amplification de la viole de gambe dans ce genre de contexte… mon setup actuel présente quelques difficultés techniques, mais au moins pas de problème de volume et pas de soundcheck stressant!)

J’en profite également pour vous signaler l’existence de ce long entretien paru il y a quelques semaines chez Noisey, effectué quelques jours après mon retour des Etats-Unis et quelques heures avant mon passage au BB Mix à Paris, d’où un certain laisser-aller dans mon Francais ;-) Le titre de l’article contient une erreur temporelle que sur le coup je n’ai même pas remarquée, puisque cela va faire 15 ans le mois prochain que mon premier album est sorti, donc on est bien au delà des 10 ans! Et oui, le titre est un peu exagéré, car je ne pense pas être “totalement snobée” en France, mais un peu quand même ;-)Je dirais plutôt que la France et moi, c’est un éternel rendez-vous manqué, un chien qui se mord la queue, une catch-22 situation… Mais je pense que personne n’a absolument toute la presse et toute l’attention du monde en sa faveur, et que j’ai déjà bien de la chance avec ce que j’ai :-)

Sur ce, à bientôt à Lyon :-)

When I wrote earlier this year that as part of my plan to have a slow 2018 I would step back from being active on Facebook and my website, I didn’t know how true this would be! That and stepping back from accepting shows for a while have been two great and very necessary decisions and I finally feel more or less rested! Which is good news since I do have two shows in the next two weeks: Stockholm on Wednesday 3rd May at Fasching, and Lyon at Le Transbordeur/ Nuits sonores festival on 10th May!
I took the opportunity of rehearsing this afternoon to shoot something I’ve been meaning to show you for a while: a close up of the Moog Music Inc. MF104M delay and MIDIMuRF action on “One warm spark”.

Almost everyone understands what a delay does, but the MuRF is kind of hard to explain as it’s so versatile and unusual, so if you can forgive the low sound quality and absence of stereo (this was shot with my phone with the sound of the PA in my studio – in a physical setting or a stereo recording the sounds bounce between Left and Right, which makes it waaaay cooler since the MuRF filters are assigned to Left and Right channels), you will still see and hear clearly how manipulating the different parameters drastically affects what’s going on: when the video starts, the chord on the Pocket Piano is in hold mode, I’ve just switched on the delay and I’m augmenting feedback while toggling the Short/ Long switch until the loop feeds back on itself in a stable way. I then remove the LFO from the MuRF and start moving the envelope (first control on the left) and the filters up and down in rhythm with the music. This interplay goes on while the Mix control (at the top) is engaged fully (100%), until I move that control back to 50% rapidly and in rhythm 8 times. After that, I switch back to the short setting on the delay, reduce feedback, reengage the LFO on the MuRF, and go back to playing the song’s beginning chord progression while going to another envelope that’s similar to the beginning but more “fluid” sounding. The song ends with going back to the long setting on the delay, keeping only the 4 lowest filters on the MuRF, then engaging 2 more of them for the ending chords. I hope this video is useful as an illustration of what I’ve been talking in some interviews, which is how so-called effects can be used to create melodies and rhythm and not just be there for cosmetic enhancement!

Dear everyone

At long last I’ve managed to gather the energy to do a full website update to include all the stuff that happened around the album release and the immediate tour that followed it: as you probably know, this website is meant to function as a kind of “resources” space, and it’s becoming a bit of a labyrinth, understandably so since I’m documenting 15 years of music-making as Colleen, and each album has been pretty different!

Since this update can also serve as a tour recap of sorts, let me guide you through some of the interviews, videos and other tidbits that may be of interest to you, especially if you’re not a Facebook follower (Facebook is of course way easier to update, but then all the information gets piled up and simultaneously buried…)

But before that, let me announce a rare date in France, 10^th May in Lyon as part of the Nuits Sonores festival, at Le Transbordeur! As I mentioned in December, I’m slowing down on the live front as my body and brain are not able to keep up with the intensity that travelling and planning for shows entails (it’s not the playing that’s the problem, I love it – it’s the stuff that I have to do to make that 1 hour of live music-making happen), so if one of my next shows is not too far from where you live, don’t miss it, as I definitely won’t play A flame my love, a frequency again in the same places: Den Haag / Rewire 2 March, Barcelona / Mutek 7 March, Stockholm 3 May. All details here or on the Songkick!

Now let’s go back to the website update!

INTERVIEWS

I had the immense pleasure of doing some really in-depth interviews while I was on tour or just before leaving, here’s a recap:

The Creative Independent – really complete interview on my approach to creativity

Resident Advisor Machine Love – another really complete interview on my creative and recording process, from a more technical point of view

Fractured Air – a long interview focused on the new album

Manifesto 21 – entretien en Français retraçant une grande partie de mon parcours et en particulier A flame my love, a frequency

Soul Kitchen – entretien court en Français factuel sur les origines de A flame my love, a frequency 

LIVE SESSIONS AND INTERVIEWS

These are most of the videos that have been shot of me playing live in venues or radio sessions. For radio I chose to play the same songs, since playing on the radio in France or the US is of course supposed to be geared towards different audiences, and the trio of “Winter dawn/Summer night (Bat song)/The stars vs creatures” is one of the easiest ones in terms of gear transition and mixing desk settings. It’s stressful enough to change these during live shows, but imagine how it feels during a *live* radio session… especially if you’ve left all the notes you so carefully prepared in your hotel room!!! True story of what I did in New York for the WNYC session!!! I now know better and have detailed photographs of the sheets on my smartphone and on my Dropbox, should this unfortunate event happen again!

With hindsight I kind of regret that now the video and audio traces I have are mostly of the same songs, but that’s life I guess…

Live interview and session for WNYC New Sounds, New York, 7 November 2017

Live in Paris, radio studio Studio 104 for Foule Sentimentale programme for France Inter, 23 November 2017 (Winter dawn / Summer night (Bat song) / The stars vs creatures)

Summer night (Bat anthem) in Lisbon, ZDB, 7 December 2017 – an alternative version of Summer night (Bat song) which I’ve been playing at encores at live shows

Live in Paris (Boulogne-Billancourt), BBmix festival, 25 November 2017 (Winter dawn – special live version / Summer night (Bat song) / The stars vs creatures / A flame my love, a frequency)

AUDIO

Dublab’s Celsius Drop live interview and session recorded in Los Angeles, 2 November 2017. Perhaps because I’d only managed to get a few hours of sleep between the LA show and waking up for the session, I extremely annoyingly use the words “you know” and “like” like, you know, 50 times! ;-))) A little bit of the session was lost due to a computer bug, so the end of Separating and all of Another world were lost, but you still get to hear: Separating (first half) / Winter dawn – special live version / Summer night (Bat song) / One warm spark.

Live radio session, at Studio 104 for Foule Sentimentale programme for France Inter radio, Paris 23 November 2017, official audio of the youtube video above  (Winter dawn / The stars vs creatures)

LYRICS

It was only recently that I realised that I hadn’t updated the lyrics page here for A flame, and that my Bandcamp did not include any lyrics – corrected now! :-)

MY STUDIO

I’ve added more of the beautiful photos taken by Isabel Dublang for the Resident Advisor article. Here are a few of them.

LIVE PHOTOS

Added mostly photos from Vera Marmelo’s photo report of my soundcheck and show at Lisbon’s ZDB on 7th December 2017

And also this one which I love of the Studio 104 performance in Paris, taken by Marion Seury from the engineer’s room: anything that looks like I’m playing in the cosmos looks good to me! ;-)

As always thanks for watching this space and caring about my music, it means the world to me!

Happy new year everyone!

I have a video and an interview to share with you to start this year, both creation-focused, which I think is the right way to start the year! The Thrill Jockey Records folks took advantage of my presence in Chicago on November 3rd for my show at the Museum of Contemporary Art to ask me to present the gear that was used to make “A flame my love, a frequency” in studio, and which I also use live: I don’t even know how I managed to explain all of this, given that this was after the show and at the end of my infamous first-week-of-touring-where-i-burn-transformers-then-buy-the-wrong-transformers-and-still-don’t-have-my-own-transformers-by-the-4th-show, I had slept 2 hours and spent the whole day trying to locate transformers until I finally did find them… Let’s say I was tired but relieved ;-))) Anyway, I’m glad we filmed this, as this is something I wanted to do anyway! If you have any technical questions please don’t hesitate to ask! Thanks a lot to Julia Dratel for doing the filming! And Moog Music Inc., Critter & Guitari and Soundcraft Mixers for the amazing gear!

And the following is one of my favourite interviews ever, from a great website, The Creative Independent. An entire interview centered on what it means to be creative over the years, how you can try to preserve that flame, and if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, I recommend reading just my reply to the last question “Is there something that you wish somebody had told you when you were first starting out?”
So here’s to a peaceful and slowly creative 2018 :-)))