colleen

So happy to be back in Madrid on 28 August as part of the Terraza Magnética series! It’ll only be my 4th show in Madrid, and amazingly enough it’s the 3rd time I’m playing La Casa Encendida] : I first played there on 10 March 2006 right between The Golden Morning Breaks and Les Ondes Silencieuses, and this photo is from playing Captain of None on the terrace on 14 August 2016: it captures really well the incredible light that started falling as the show progressed, and I still remember the breeze that mercifully started too and the swifts flying past us… I’m so excited to come back with a 3rd setup to play The Tunnel and the Clearing, and – time should allow for that – a couple of new songs from the forthcoming album!

Gracias de corazón a Andrés Noarbe de Rotor Discos, La Casa Encendida y Mario Andrei por la foto!

Talking of which… I have decided to take a bit more time for LP8, partly because my health hasn’t been optimal in the past few months and therefore I haven’t been as efficient as I would have wanted to, but mainly because this album just wants to be long and complex: at a certain point, my albums always take a volition of their own, and I feel like I’m “responding” to what the album needs to be, as opposed to consciously steering it in a certain direction. To do justice to the several directions the music is taking (a very “composed” style, a very experimental synthesis side, a more pop-oriented approach with singing, and a more rhythmical side with the Elka), to work out a coherent tracklisting, and to make sure mastering goes smoothly (ie no “I need to listen to a 70-minute album in as many places as possible in 3 days” rush), I have decided it just makes sense to take my time in order to savour the process as much as possible, and avoid stress.

I’ll also admit that in a way it’s almost like I don’t want to finish it, because I’m enjoying the open-endedness of it all so much Maybe the perspective of getting a new synth for LP9 will be my main motivator for finishing LP8

RESET THE COUNTER TO ZERO, OR HOW THE COVID-DELAYED KINGS PLACE CONCERT WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED. 
(Written on the Sunday right after the show, held on 19 March 2022)

I am feeling so high from yesterday’s show at Kings Place, London. Every musician who has ever performed live knows that after a show, you can experience a myriad of feelings, mixed ones too, covering various areas: be delighted about one thing, disappointed by another, from how you played to the organization, the welcome you get from the venue, the sound, the audience… 
For me the main question usually boils down to: did I get the reward of putting in a good performance relative to the amount of time I spent rehearsing, or did I get “unlucky” for X or Y reason and not reap the fruit of my labour? And sometimes the reply hurts, and it was one of the reasons I had decided to give up live playing last year: uncertain results for an always insane amount of work. 
Yesterday though… everything just felt so *right* and the day was exactly what I needed to reaffirm the reversal of my previous decision: the joy of hearing sound beautifully amplified in a wonderful venue, for an audience that listens and cares, with exquisite treatment by everyone at the venue. It was also the first time I got a lot of help for a show (of my previous 230 + shows, 90% were done purely by myself, with me carrying more than half my body weight in gear). Literally without that human help the show would have been much less of what it was. To play those two very different albums (Captain of None and The Tunnel and the Clearing), I needed to bring 60 kilos of gear and instruments, and this would have been impossible without my awesome friend, colleague and now roadie/tech assistant David @furvoice @mutabor_music. Gid @lordgid from @soundgasltd drove down from Derbyshire to bring an Elka Drummer One and a Space Echo just for the show, thereby solving a problem for me and making the sound extra special with the real thing. 
Hopefully Covid is now truly getting weaker, and if the worldwide situation allows, I will tour the States again, and do more shows elsewhere, with a renewed gratitude for how wonderful this can truly be.

MORE MEMORIES FROM THE SHOW AT EL PUMAREJO, BARCELONA, 11 MARCH.

My dear friend and collaborator Luis Torroja, who was responsible for my last press photos and made the mini-documentary on The Tunnel and the Clearing, took these beautiful pictures of my show in Barcelona.

FEATURE IN CATALAN IN ARA

Finally, I forgot to post here that I got a full (and beautifully-written) feature in Catalan in prominent newspaper Ara, read it here.

Yesterday at @elpumarejo was my first real live show since September 2019 (I played 6 shows in May 2021 in tiny gallery @chiquitaroom in Barcelona, where due to Covid capacity was extremely limited, so while these were real live performances, they felt more like a super intimate gathering than what we usually understand by “live show”).

This double album show is madly ambitious from a technical point of view, and this ambition comes with its own pitfalls: a great probability of problems and mistakes happening… and they did, which is hard for the perfectionist in me. 
It’s all the more ironic that I decided to do this considering I was actually going to stop playing live, in great part because I felt I couldn’t handle the brain-and-nerves requirement of playing live shows that are so “freefall”.
Most decisions though happen because of complex reasons. In this case, the Captain + Tunnel idea was born of 1) the necessity of playing a long show in London @kingsplacelondon for what I thought was going to be my last show for a long time or forever, and The Tunnel being short, I knew I’d have to play more material 2)  I didn’t feel like playing the previous album (A flame) because it reminds me of feelings I’d rather not revisit right now 3) I had dug out the treble viola to check it was doing ok, and before I knew it I was playing it again and remembering that Captain is one of my favourite albums.
So yesterday was equal parts bliss, equal parts feeling seriously challenged, but it’s had the advantage of shining a light on my tendency to immediately think in terms of extremes: “this is madness, why do I even bother playing live?” vs “I love this so much, it makes me feel connected with the world and with people in a way that being in my studio is never going to”. Obviously, the answer lies in the middle, so I’m already thinking about how I could still play live while making it easier for me in terms of performing. And I’ll work some more this week to try and pull off a good show next week 19/03 😀
🙏🙏🙏 @lilinterna for the beautiful photos, David @furvoice @mutabor_music and @elpumarejo ❤❤❤