colleen

Yesterday, while desperately trying to make a decision about which camera to buy before Cybermonday finished, I almost had an out of body experience as I endlessly scrolled through the various camera models, making a list of their pros and cons, triplechecking their specs against my needs for my seemingly simple project: filming my synth from above to have that projected live on a screen in the venue (the big screen live equivalent of what I do with my phone for my tutorial videos)
Can’t be that difficult, right? Well, IT IS, and I find that bonkers. 
Potential camera pitfalls range from short battery life (shorter than my set length, for sure) to complete absence of HDMI port or adaptor possibility, from even shorter battery life in heated conditions (and stages do get crazy hot) to poor image quality in low light…
Because we are talking of venues (large, often underground) and not a home setting, you have to factor in latency problems due to instability of Wifi, degradation of signal strength along long cables, possible unreliability of Bluetooth… 
For every solution, a list of caveats, and an extra accessory to buy…
Logistically, a bulky camera filming overhead requires a solid support system, just not available in venues. Also, my aim was to be self-sufficient: small camera with no one needed to operate it, no laptop and/or routers (I am already at maximum capacity gearwise).
Last but not least, my idea was that people could see the *detail* of what I am doing, but it turns out most cameras shooting in 4K can’t be projected in 4K, so that on a huge screen, the result is pretty disappointing.
Throughout the afternoon I found myself frequently mumbling “F..k this” in Spanish, then in the evening, I finally found relief by deciding to completely give up on the idea. Problem solved. No stress. No extra expense. Is it a shame? Yes, kind of. But I get to focus on the music again, and I know you come for the music anyway 😀 END OF RANT🤪

🙏🙏🙏📷 @fiveservice @mherlow @aslaugmusic

LE GUESS WHO Part II, JANSKERK, UTRECHT 11th November 2023: SPACE ECHO AND THE “RHODES SOUND”.  
I adore playing Le jour et la nuit du réel live, and I love the transition from the Day side to the Night side as I play the last Day suite, “Be without being seen”: instead of sending the Moog Grandmother into the MF-104M Delay via Aux Send, I switch to the Roland RE-201 Space Echo in my studio (my Soundgas Echo from 2019 is still going strong!) and, for the live show, a BOSS RE-20 pedal: it does not have the magic of the real unit (no real tape noise and no input drive), but it does do a great job of giving me the exact same echo as on the record without me having to look for equivalent settings.
The shift in mood is immediately palpable: the MF-104M is to me an “earth energy” device, whereas the Space Echo couldn’t be more aptly named, it really does send sound into another dimension.
For the next show, at home in Barcelona on 14th December at L’Auditori (tickets here), I am already smiling at the thought of having the real thing with me on stage, filmed from above – echo tape travelling is my favourite gear sight in the world!
When the Night side begins with “Les parenthèses enchantées – Movement I”, I always really feel the shift in energy. I love how sparse and spacious that whole suite is, and how simple the settings are for it after the denser sounds and complex patching of the previous half. I even called this the “Rhodes sound” on my worksheets throughout the making of the album, and it was my original sonic building block and starting point for a lot of the compositions.

Next stops, with more dates to be announced next year:
14 12 L’Auditori / L’Afluent – BARCELONA, ES @auditoribcn @lafluent
16 12 Galeria Ze Dos Bois – LISBOA, PT @galeriazedosbois
2024
29 02 Elevate – GRAZ, AT @elevate_festival
19-23 03 Tremor – SAÕ MIGUEL, AZORES, PT @tremorpdl
21-24 03 Big Ears – KNOXVILLE, TN, USA @bigearsfestival
🙏🙏🙏 @leguesswho and 📷 @porfidou @stretchead @jobdewit @negativland00

I had high expectations for @le_guess_who as I had heard so much about the festival, both from musicians who had played there and people who had attended as audience members, and to say I was not disappointed is an understatement – so much so that I have decided to post several reels from the footage I was sent.
I got my first standing ovation (I *think* it is my first, and it must be, because I think I would remember if I had had one before), and after nearly 250 shows (show #250 will be next year!), it was really heart-warming, especially since I really didn’t expect it in a festival setting and it totally took me by surprise.
I only learnt I was playing at the church of Janskerk a few days before, and was told shortly before starting that mine was to be the last ever Le Guess Who performance in that space! And as with @ekkobergen the week before, I got amazingly beautiful lighting – what a privilege!
I loved the church’s acoustics once I got used to the slapback echo I received in the choir (at first I thought something was wrong with the Grandmother!) and even with these mobile phone recordings, with headphones you can get a sense of the extra space it produced.

LE GUESS WHO Part I, JANSKERK, UTRECHT 11th November 2023 + A FEW WORDS ON UNQUANTIZED SEQUENCING WITH @squarpinstruments HAPAX ON “TO HOLD AND TO BE HELD”.

“To hold and to be held” is a favorite of mine to play live: I just launch the composition’s long unquantized sequences with the @squarpinstruments Hapax sequencer I bought specially for the live shows, with some sections repeated in order to give me time to “arrive” to the right settings. The reason I smile so much when I play this and it goes well is not just that the music puts me in a great mood: it is *really* hard to get the settings just right on the Grandmother (we’re talking a millimitre on the LFO Rate knob making a real difference) *and* on the MF-104M Delay to produce the right lilt and groove. Mvt II involves 3 patches coming in succession, #3 being my fav as I feel the music is playing table tennis with itself!
Le jour et la nuit du réel out @thrilljockey
🙏🙏🙏 @le_guess_who, the audience and for 📷 @tristtristanstan @aslaugmusic

Slowly catching up on things now I am finally home for a 4 week stretch before the last 2 shows of the year, Barcelona at L’Auditori on 14 December and Lisbon at Galeria Ze Dos Bois on 16 December.

SLETTEBAKEN KIRKE, BERGEN, EKKO FESTIVAL XX @ekkobergen 5 NOVEMBER 2023, AND THE 1991 CAMPER VAN TRIP. 
When I first saw pictures of Slettebaken Kirke, a brutalist church in the outskirts of Bergen, I immediately thought this would be a special show. Entering the church, which feels unexpectedly intimate and faces a beautiful expanse of water, my impression was immediately confirmed. I hadn’t been told though that there would be a special light and shadows show created by a top light designer, Silje Grimstad, and when I saw the photos and videos after the show, I was floored. 

Months before I had thought of asking for this show to be documented on film properly, but the grind of touring coupled with “real life” also still happening, and my uncertainty as to how so much concrete would sound, meant I got discouraged and didn’t even enquire as to the possibility. I really regret it, as I think this was a unique experience that won’t be repeated. 
It felt strong and bittersweet to be back in Bergen at this exact point in my life: it isn’t just the place I’ve played the most in Scandinavia (4 times), it was also part of the farthest trip we did in the camper van with my parents and brother when I was 15, in 1991. I have very distinct memories of being in town, and now that my dad is extremely ill, I could not help but think of him, how much he was once able to do, and his complete helplessness now. 
It was also on that trip that we stopped in Copenhagen on the way back: I saw two musicians doing Beatles covers on acoustic guitars, which led me to ask my parents if they could buy me one. They agreed, and that’s how this whole music-making journey started.
🙏🙏🙏❤❤❤ the audience, the amazing team @ekkobergen , especially Asle for inviting me back and choosing me to close the festival, and @martheserck for being the sweetest driver, and Slettebaken Kirke.
Big thank you too to @freyaphotos for taking me birdwatching on Herdla – I can still see the grey seal staring at us!!! – and Petri @blankblank_studio and Henrik @henriksvanevik for the reconnection walk 😍
📷 @martheserck @ekkobergen @petriblank @ssekkingstad Pernille Grondal @__persnille @katarina_kierulf

AMULETOS PODCAST EN ESPAÑOL

Barcelona-based Ana Banana DJ already invited me to her radio programme Amuletos last year for a retrospective of my work, in Spanish. I finally recorded the *real* Amuletos podcast last month, at my studio: Ana asks her guests to choose music and an object that function as “amulets” for them, and I had a great time choosing these, you can listen to the program here.

Here are a couple of related photos she took at my place, and the text I wrote in Spanish.

“Ha sido un placer poder hacer una selección bastante diferente de lo que suelo elegir para mixes y demás programas de radio: la propuesta de Ana de elegir “músicas amuletos” me ha permitido dejar de lado la preocupación de ser “original” en mis elecciones musicales, y resonó inmediatamente con el momento muy peculiar en el que me encuentro ahora, un periodo en el que a menudo me encuentro revisitando momentos de mi infancia y adolescencia, lo que me ha permitido reconectar con muchos recuerdos musicales hasta ahora bastante olvidados e incluso infravalorados. 

He ido eligiendo cada tema de manera cronológica, cada uno coincidiendo a la vez con lugares muy concretos de mi vida de aquel entonces y tambien con formatos y equipos de reproducción muy específicos. Tuvé que dejar de lado un par de momentos importantes, pero casi todos han cabido en esa selección de 7 temas. Espero que los disfrutarais, y tambien el hecho que la charla sea en mi idioma adoptivo, el que hablo cada dia y en el que pienso y sueño. Mil gracias Ana!”

ANIMAL SHELTER AND RESCUE UPDATE

Last but least, I am copying here the text I sent to my Bandcamp followers on 8th November, for those of you who have been following my animal shelter initiative linked to my song “Conditional”.

KINGS PLACE, LONDON, 15 OCTOBER 2023
The UK is where I lived for more than 2 years of my young adulthood (1997-99: Winchester, Liverpool, Salford), it’s obviously very dear to me for musical reasons too, and the show at Kings Place last year cemented my decision to go back to live playing, so it felt tofally right to start the European leg of this tour there. Also, the beautiful symbol of playing in Salford at The White Hotel @m3_7lw , 2.4 miles from where I had moved 25 years previously, at a really rough point of my life, was not lost on me. 
So thank you so much to each and everyone of you who came to these 2 shows. Also please know that your kind words, the fact that some of you travelled to see these shows,  really means a lot to me. 
At Kings Place I was given the luxury of a long show with an interval and it makes so much sense to play the Jour and Nuit sides with a break in the middle. I was able to play “Mon coeur” for the first time (I’ve sacrificed it in the other shows because each movement is so complex to  set up, but so short!) , but I ended up not playing “Les parenthèses – Epilogue” because I didn’t see the song in my @squarpinstruments Hapax, and yet afterwards I realized it was there, I just needed to scroll up! Which gives me an opportunity to say how happy I am with it: it’s doing exactly what I needed it to do, and can do so much more! 

SILENT GREEN, BERLIN, 20th OCTOBER.
I have been happy at every single show of this tour so far, but some shows end up being more special than others, usually because of a combination of place, sound and audience: the show in Berlin @silent.green last week was one of these for me, I am still carrying its warmth within me.

AQUARIUM DRUNKARD TRANSMISSIONS PODCAST: INDEPTH INTERVIEW ON LE JOUR ET LA NUIT DU RÉEL + ESSENTIAL TREMORS PODCAST + HHV 10 FAV VINYL
It was my immense pleasure to speak to Jason Woodbury @aquariumdrunkard last month about the new album and go really deep and personal into the multifaceted concept behind it and the life events that have informed it. We ended up talking about online vs real life, night time, but also neurodegenerative disease, mental health and suicide. Having now relistened to the podcast, I’m relieved that it doesn’t actually sound grim – more like an opening up about the serious life stuff which can (and often does) end up affecting all of us.
When we spoke in 2021 about my previous album, The Tunnel and the Clearing, we had also gone into some very personal aspects of that album, and I am really grateful to Jason for creating a long form, safe space where his guests can explore this sort of themes at length, without this feeling at any point like a vacuous exercise in promotion.
If you want to know more about the album and are interested in perhaps listening to it in a different, deeper or complementary way, I really invite you to take some time and listen to the podcast in your favorite space, as I don’t think I’ll have many more opportunities to talk about this record in a deeper, more personal way.

I also got the chance to speak about 3 songs that powerfully impacted me at 3 stages of my young life (Lee Perry in early childhood, The Beatles in my early teens and This Heat in my late teens) for the brilliant Essential Tremors podcast. For family reasons, the past year has been full of revisiting my youth, which in turn has led to a reevaluation of what it is that has led me to making music and making it in the way I’ve made it.

In a similar spirit, but in writing this time, I was invited by HHV to talk about 10 vinyl that have shaped, improved and made me.

As always, thank you so much for your support and your time!!!