colleen

So many things happening and too much travelling for me to update this newsletter as often as I would want to! Don’t forget you can check out my Facebook page for more regular updates, even if you’re not a Facebook user.

On the live front, unfortunately my two shows at the Cappadox festival in Turkey this weekend are cancelled due to legal reasons. I apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Lots of photos were taken at my show in Lisbon’s ZDB, both here and here – some of them are truly beautiful, and I had a very special time there, thanks ZDB! Thanks also to Fractured Air for the show in Cork’s Opera House and to GNRation in Braga!

Don’t forget that next week on 24th May I’m playing at LSO St Luke’s in London, the show is presented by the Barbican in association with Artic Circle, get your tickets here!

More interviews and things to listen to this week: a long interview in English on the 405 and also on Music Won’t Save you, both in English and Italian (the interview was originally published in Rockerilla last month).

I had a double page spread in the cultural supplement of Portugal’s biggest national newspaper Publico, Ipsilon, here’s the link to the full article and a nice photo below!

I also finished the Facebook series on how I recorded the songs on Captain of None: head over here for details on “Eclipse” and “Captain of None”.

I had the great and unexpected pleasure of Captain of None being chosen on the Album de Minuit radio show on France Inter, so for those of you who understand French, head here to listen to the show and the mini-interview in which I was asked what is my favourite midnight album.

I made a second 100% Jamaican mix, this time for FACT Magazine, focusing on songs that have specifically influenced Captain of None. Here’s the full text I wrote about the mix, and as always, thanks for your support! :-))))

https://soundcloud.com/factmag/fact-mix-494-colleen-may-15/s-QPyOx#t=0:00

My second 100% Jamaican mix, this time for FACT Magazine, focusing on songs that have specifically influenced Captain of None. Read the full text I wrote below:
This mix includes music which has specifically influenced me in the making of my fifth album Captain of None, mostly from the point of view of song-writing, interpretation, production, or just a general “feel” in the music, for lack of a better word. No other song encapsulates how these various aspects of music-making are intertwined in Jamaican music better than Burning Spear’s “Door Peeper”: released in 1969, the combination of Burning Spear’s voice, percussion, compressed horn line, minimal instrumentation and lyrics, and dry but deep production make this song one of the most earth-shaking I’ve ever heard. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Scientist’s “Dangerous Match 1” from 1982 sounds like underwater swimming in weird waters and shows how abstract and stylized Jamaican music can be. Tapper Zukie’s “Simpleton Badness” is a perfect example of idiosyncratic toasting, crazy tape manipulation and radical production from 1973. The Lee Perry-produced “Long Time Ago” by Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus marvellously mixes traditional Nyabinghi drumming and intense chanting with Perry’s extremely dense production style , and I just love how the volume and intensity increase unexpectedly at the end of the song with the arrival of a killer bassline. Noel Ellis, son of Alton, has one of my favourite voices, but I chose this track especially for the mind-blowing guitar parts featured in the dub version – guitar perfection in my opinion! When I first heard Augustus Pablo’s “Pablo in Fine Style”, the intricacy and delicateness of the melodica reminded me of baroque music and Mozart, which are not obvious reference points when you’re listening to Jamaican music! Another Lee Perry production, the unusual sounding “Paul Bogle” by King Burnett (NB: attribution to this singer has been debated, but that’s how it’s credited on the 7” label): slow and melancholy with a meandering melody, it’s one more example of how Jamaican music can sound so far from the clichés it’s unfortunately too often associated with. Niney’s “Weeping Lotion” is the opposite, a fast and frantic high-energy feast which is just amazingly mixed! With “Collins Sweat” by Collins Music Wheelers and Wackies Rhythm Force’s “Black Africa”, the amazing flute bended in ways reminiscent of early BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the lilting melodica against the half-tribal half-machine-like backdrop show once again the Jamaican knack for abstraction rooted in physicality which I’ve found so inspiring.
Prince Far I’s voice and vocal treatment on “Plant Up”, Tapper Zukie’s razor-sharp “Man Ah Warrior” and Little Madness’s stirring a cappella on “Mother Country Version” are more examples of the power of the combination of voice and minimal accompaniment in Jamaican music. The Gladiators’s classic “Bongo Red” has guitar that I’m jealous of and excellent lyrics to boot. Black Kush (also known as Black Kish)’s “Natural Rock” is a rare example of acoustic guitar in Jamican music, and its minimal approach to percussion also struck a chord with me. Last but not least, I just had to close with a track that I heard in my childhood: “Return of the Super Ape” is one of the many Lee Perry/Upsetters songs contained on a tape that my parents bought in the late 70s and which we played in the car on long trips. To this day I just love this track and still find it totally unique and one of a kind: you can never be sure of what it is that you’re hearing on this song: monkeys, spanners falling on the floor in a metal house, a jazz band lost in Jamaica, soap bubbles transformed into notes… before one of the best breaks and song finales of all time…

The “Thank You Jamaica” mix I did for Solid Steel can be listened to on their soundcloud and website, where you will find a text I wrote to accompany the mix. I hope you will love the songs I selected as much as I do!

You can also hear me interviewed on American radio NPR and on the Barbican’s podcast in anticipation of my concert in London on 24^th May at LSO St Luke’s presented by the Barbican and Artic circle (tickets here), and read an interview in Polish for Nowa Muzyka here.

I have kept on writing my facebook posts on how I recorded each song on the new album: “Salina Stars”, “Lighthouse” and “Soul Alphabet”.

I have also updated the lyrics section of the website to include all the lyrics of Captain of None.

Last but not least, I’m playing in Cork at the Cork Opera House this Sunday May 3rd (presented by Fractured Air, tickets here),  in Lisbon’s ZDB on 8^th May and Braga’s GNRation on 9^th May.

You can finally view Naoko Tanaka’s incredible video for “Captain of none”, I hope you will love it as much as I do!

The video was premiered on Ad Hoc with an interview dealing specifically with the video and on the Nouvel Obs with a short interview in French.

You can also read another interview in German on Culturmag.

I also started a series of posts on my Facebook showing pictures from the recording of the album and explaining how each song was made. I will do one big post on this blog here once I reach the end of the album, but in the meantime, you can have a look on my Facebook for “Holding Horses”, “I’m Kin” and “This Hammer Breaks”.

And tomorrow I’ll be leaving for Holland where I’m playing in ‘s-Hertogenbosch at the FAQ festival on Saturday 18^th April.

Captain of None

has been released in Japan by Plancha and I did two dub-influenced versions of both “I’m Kin” and “Captain of None” for the Japanese CD which you can now stream from the Thrill Jockey website and buy from Itunes (you can buy the whole album or buy the tracks individually).

Here are some awesome photos of the album in Tower Records Shibuya and Tower Records Shinjuku in Tokyo last week!

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for Fractured Air for an in-depth view of the album, its influences and how it was made. French readers can also find an interview with The Drone.

Last but not least, I was asked by Self-Titled Magazine to choose 5 of my favorite Jamaican versions, so if you want to add some Jamaican dub goodness to your life head this way!

The video for “Captain of None” and the Solid Steel mix are coming up this week, so keep your eyes peeled for more news! :-)))

After 9 long months of waiting, my fifth album Captain of None is finally out and you can stream the album directly from the Thrill Jockey page for the album and buy it there or at any other real or online shop you fancy – athough as you probably know labels benefit most when you buy your copy directly from them! The white vinyl limited edition is already sold out so a huge thank you to all those of you who have bought copies – the vinyl copies I will be selling on this tour are all white vinyl as long as that lasts, so if you want to grab a copy at one of my live shows just head straight to the merch table as I will be bringing very few copies with me (my luggage on tour is 25 kilos so I’m never able to bring large quantities of merch).

There will be many things coming up this week, and one I’m really looking forward to is the premiere of Naoko Tanaka‘s incredible video for the title song of the album – here are more stills from the video.

There will also be interviews, a mix for Solid Steel,  a concert in Paris at the Magic Barbès Festival at FGO Barbara on Saturday, and every day on my facebook page I will post photos taken during the recording of the album, to give you a glimpse of how it was recorded. Today here’s a portrait taken by Iker Spozio of me and the star of this album, my beloved treble viola da gamba made by the great French luthier François Danger of Atelier des 7 cordes.

Thank you SO MUCH for your support, it truly means a lot to me :-)))