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Colleen goes acoustic

In 2003 French woman Cecile Schott released her first album Everyone Alive Wants Answers under the artist name Colleen. An all-electronic albums based on sampled loops, it's organic sounds made heads turn in the world of electronic music lovers worldwide. Here was samples from classical recordings, everyday life, movies and television and more, all of it sampled, looped and warped beyond recognition, yet almost devoid of percussive sounds, cutup techniques or the fancy hallmarks of others using the same toys to produce music. No-one was really prepared for something that processed to sound so much like acoustic music, and Colleen harvested rave reviews and a following eager to witness her next step.

4 years have passed, and Colleen has released another 3 albums, the latest of which Les Ondes Silencieuses is out today. Yours truly witnessed a solo concert with Cecile Schott 2 years ago at a mostly electronic festival. Colleen, being one of the headliners on the festival poster, proved to be the only electronic act that showed up on stage without a computer. Instead, she brought her acoustic guitar, cello, musical box and assorted other toys and acoustic instruments, and ran them all through loopstations, delays and filter pedals, to produce a wholly remarkable soundscape right there on stage. It was an extremely fascinating experience, and also a signpost of the direction that Colleen's music has taken since then, going more and more into recordings of herself playing acoustic instruments, then treated with all sorts of studio equipment to retain the production values of contemporary electronic music.

Les Ondes Silencieuses rounds up that development perfectly. Exclusively played on old european instruments, such as Spinet, Clarinet and Viola da gamba, the compositions and the productions reveal Colleen's roots in loopbased electronic music, as well as almost medieval European music. And no, still no drums ...

I personally recommend this. Anybody interested can preview and buy the album online at iTMS, or through your favourite CD retailer.