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I had everything ready to roll for my own “Mellotron version” which I’ll play live in Barcelona, London and Brighton very soon (details below) when Sol decided – as  usual – to participate in my music-making, and I just hit record on both Reaper and my mobile phone.
I love that his random bum, body and paw notes are usually spot-on, then go into completely unpredictable territory, and in this case he must have landed on some interesting parameter of the @squarpinstruments Hapax at second 33′ and I seriously wish i knew what it was!
@moogsynthesizers Grandmother into @soundgasltd Roland RE-201 Space Echo.

27th October – Barcelona, L’Automatica @l_automatica  presented by Amuletos @amuletosradio –  1 pm midday show
1st November – London, Grand Junction @grandjunctionw2  presented by Baba Yaga’s Hut @babayagashutlondon
2nd November – Brighton, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts  @attenboroughctr

I am coming out of my “summer hibernation” with a short series of videos to give you a glimpse of the special versions of Le jour et la nuit du réel which spontaneously arose during my many hours of rehearsal for this album’s shows, and which I’ll play in Barcelona on 27th October, London 1st November and a tiny bit in Brighton too on 2nd November. DETAILS HERE OR HERE.

Rehearsing can often feel like dwelling on the past, but with synthesis it almost inevitably becomes an occasion to expand skills and ideas as happy parameter-and-patching accidents can and do happen, especially on the journey from one song to another if you keep the sound on all the time.
Le jour was already born from that process of intensive experimentation of “versions” over 14 months, so in the end, I have chosen to keep “special versions” for only the 3 movements of “Subterranean” and “Les parenthèses enchantées IV”, but I am super happy with how they all “reverse” the mood of the original: “Subterranean” goes from energetic and raw to dream-like and psychedelic, while “Parenthèses” goes from slowly meditative to bouncey and danceable (well, danceable for me anyway). 
The Echo is intentionally clipping HARD on this, as per the @soundgasltd rule and I love the pure drive you get when just turning down the Echo volume and feedback.
Beat on Grandmother appears with Mod set to Square, max PWM, mod wheel at max and Osc 2 on Narrow Pulse.

In other news, thanks to your purchases on Bandcamp Friday of 4th October, for which I pledged 100% of income to Beloved Asheville to help in the aftermath of hurricane Helene in the town of Asheville and surroundings, I was able to send 250$ to the friend of a friend of a friend (not kidding!) who works at a big company that has pledged to double match any donation going towards hurricane Helene relief, meaning a TOTAL OF 750$ were sent to the organization. Once again THANK YOU SO MUCH to anyone who joined me on this!

Dear newsletter readers, I have been taking a long and much needed break from communicating, which I am breaking today on the occasion of a new Bandcamp Friday, for which I am fundraising to help the Asheville, North Carolina, community that has been severely affected by hurricane Helene. BANDCAMP HERE but also here on my website with players neatly stacked on top of each other.

I am copying below the message I sent to my Bandcamp followers today:

Dear everyone

I hope this message finds you as well as possible within the world’s current context.

As you may have noticed, I took a break from actively fundraising for animal rescues: fundraising takes a lot of energy, even something as seemingly simple as what I did here on Bandcamp Fridays, and I felt that after a whole year of doing this, even after adding several songs to the initiative, I had kind of run into a “closed loop”. You can still donate, but I will wait until I have a sizeable chunk of donations to choose an animal rescue organization.

Today though, I have decided to HELP THE ASHEVILLE COMMUNITY, which has been awfully struck by hurricane Helene. Now those of you reading this from the States will be aware of the events, but I think a lot of people in Europe and outside the States haven’t necessarily heard about it, so in a nutshell, this is a massive natural disaster and the situation is and will remain extremely serious for months, with Asheville residents being told they won’t have water for another 6 to 8 weeks, people living in isolated areas unable to receive help, and abundant serious health issues, from contaminated mud to people being unable to receive their treatment, whether that be dialysis, methadone, oxygen supply, etc. 

As some of you may remember, I was lucky enough to stay in Asheville for a couple of days in 2017, when I was invited by Moog to play in their Moog Soundlab. Since then the place and people who live there have had a special place in my heart.

Therefore today Bandcamp Friday, I WILL GIVE 100% OF MY INCOME FOR ANY PURCHASE OF MY ALBUMS TO “BELOVED ASHEVILLE”, an organization that was recommended to me by people on the ground. Not only that, but I will be able to send this money and have this donation MATCHED BY X 2 (not giving details on this setup, but this will be an incredible way to maximize your dollars).

For purposes of clarity: 

– 100% of my income is 50% of what you pay (Thrill Jockey, the label that releases my records, operates a 50/50 share policy). This will be after Paypal commission.

– The albums are ALL THE ALBUMS + MUSIC BOX EP on the Bandcamp page.

Excluded are the FOR ANIMAL SHELTERS songs and Solar/Stellar remix EP.

– Please remember: Thrill Jockey run the sales of physical items on my Bandcamp *from the US*, so sadly, this means shipping costs will be prohibitive for people outside the US (and obviously, what you pay for shipping goes towards shipping, and is not a donation). If you are outside the US, I would encourage you to purchase digitally.

A massive hug from me to you

Cécile

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.