Colleen - Les Ondes Silencieuses (Leaf, 2007)

1		This Place In Time (2:33)
2		Le Labyrinthe (5:15)
3		Sun Against My Eyes (4:22)
4		Les Ondes Silencieuses (6:09)
5		Blue Sands (5:16)
6		Echoes And Coral (3:09)
7		Sea Of Tranquillity (5:46)
8		Past The Long Black Land (3:41)
9		Le Bateau (7:09)
10		Unfold Out (5:36)
11		Serpentine (6:04)
12		I'll Read You A Story (5:18)

Our love affair with Cécile Schott (known to the world as Colleen) is well documented - all it took was her charming debut album 'Everyone Alive Wants Answers' and we were totally hooked. The Gallic mistress of modern electronic music had introduced a feminine side to a staid masculine world, and we had found an album we could sink into and fall in love with. Her use of samples was totally unique - rather than overlay sound upon sound to create a dense soup of noise she appeared totally happy letting the small silences speak for themselves, and it was this restraint that gave her an originality which would see her quickly become one of the most organic producers around. With her second album 'The Golden Morning Breaks' her status was cemented, but instead of pillaging samples from an extensive record collection this time she was manning the instruments herself, and the results were breathtaking. 'Les Ondes Silencieuses' is Schott's third full-length album (following the delightful Music Box sequences of last year's mini-album "..Et Les Boites A Musique") and is by some distance her most refined, mature and successful emission to date. Schott has been released from the trappings of 'electronic music' - 'Les Ondes Silenceuses' is built around minimal acoustic composition : not quite modern classical, avant folk, restrained rock or psychedelia (although it probably absorbs little tiny parts of almost all of these) and in its wilful subtlety it's one of the most beautiful records we've heard this year. Utilising an array of instruments ranging from what sound like Tibetan singing bowls (I think they're actually Crystal glasses) through to gently strummed acoustic guitar, chimes, cello, violin, the spinet (a smaller relative of the harpsichord) and Clarinet - Cécile plays every note on this incredible album and the arrangements and compositions are so restrained and timeless it's quite hard to believe that this is the same artist who relied so heavily on samples a few years back. Schott has always displayed an understanding of timing and harmony, but here it feels like this talent is finally explored to its fullest; every change and every note of every distinct segment is there for a reason and takes you into deeper realms of her emotional landscape. There is nothing twee or unnecessarily bijou about this album - in fact in places it's almost uncompromising in its vision - but the end result is a sequence of tracks that's magical to listen to, and we mean that in the most literal sense. One of the loveliest record you'll hear this year - this comes to you with our highest recommendation. Gorgeous.

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Colleen - Mort Aux Vaches (Mort Aux Vaches, 2006)

1		A Little Mechanical Waltz (2:35)
2		The Zither Song (5:13)
3		The Bowing Song (3:44)
4		The Melodica Song (8:02)
5		The Thumb Piano Song (5:33)
6		The Ukulele Song (3:39)
7		The Cello Song (3:34)
8		Petite Fleur (6:23)

Back in stock. It is always exciting when we have a lavishly packaged Mort Aux Vaches cd drop into the office; especially when it is by an artist we are all so passionate about. Colleen’s offering for the ongoing series is housed in a thick hardback book style case, draped in sublime textured wallpaper straight out of an early 20th century collection and is all held together by that all important split pin. The music is of course as you’d expect from Miss Cecile Schott; beautifully measured compositions using unusual instruments, all played by Schott herself (Zither, Thumb Piano, Ukulele etc). Each track (bar the last) is based around an instrument, and the tracks were recorded live for Dutch radio station VPRO so there are no overdubs here! The work is very similar to her last album on Leaf ‘The Golden Morning Breaks’ but feels even more stripped down, raw and emotional. The tracks seem spontaneous, and that makes them feel incredibly intimate and striking. This has to be one of the finest Mort Aux Vaches cds in the series and is another reason why we love the lady from Paris, let yourself get swept away by Colleen.

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Colleen - Colleen Et Les Boîtes À Musique (Leaf, 2006)

1		John Levers The Ratchet (0:30)
2		What Is A Componium? - Part 1 (6:45)
3		Charles's Birthday Card (0:48)
4		Will You Gamelan For Me? (3:02)
5		The Sad Panther (1:53)
6		Under The Roof (3:09)
7		What Is A Componium? - Part 2 (3:06)
8		A Bear Is Trapped (1:04)
9		Please Gamelan Again (2:30)
10		Your Heart Is So Loud (3:56)
11		Calypso In A Box (0:47)
12		Bicycle Bells (2:28)
13		Happiness Nuggets (2:13)
14		I'll Read You A Story (6:51)

Colleen aka Cecile Schott is a lady we've always had a fondness for, throughout her last two endearing albums she defined a sound, an unpretentious delicate weaving of instruments and samples which tickled our eardrums in the most ethereal way imaginable. Armed with a loop pedal and a cache of instrumental weaponry she layered whimsical sound over whimsical sound and subtly carved out a niche for herself in the overpopulated world of electronic music. 'Colleen Et Les Boites A Musique' ("Colleen and the music boxes"), however, is her most arresting and sublime offering to date - constructed entirely from the impossibly beautiful sounds of chiming music boxes. Opening with the clanking and winding of 'John Levers the Ratchet', this is the perfect introduction, as if the record were being wound like a music box to run across its 40 minute life-span before returning to stillness. The music box has, of course, been used before within a contemporary framework (Aphex Twin's breathtaking "Nanou" for one), but the way Schott composes seems so obviously matched with the mechanical and naïve qualities we hear that she seems to own the concept. "Colleen Et Les Boites A Musique" is in fact so sublime that her output to date seems to have been merely leading up to this serendipitous moment - concept and execution coming together for a wondrous display of simplicity and beauty. Like the soundtrack to your favourite half-remembered fairytale, you won't find a warmer, more inviting record this year.

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Colleen - Everyone Alive Wants Answers (Leaf, 2003)

A1		Everyone Alive Wants Answers (3:32)
A2		Ritournelle (3:09)
A3		Carry-Cot (1:54)
A4		Your Heart On Your Sleeve (2:47)
A5		Goodbye Sunshine (2:49)
A6		One Night And It's Gone (3:42)
A7		Long Live Mice In The Metro (2:51)
B1		I Was Deep In A Dream And I Didn't Know It (2:56)
B2		Babies (3:34)
B3		Sometimes On A Happy Cloud (1:56)
B4		A Swimming Pool Down The Railway Track (4:15)
B5		In The Train With No Lights (2:02

“Everyone Alive Wants Answers” is the haunting work of 26-year-old Parisienne Cecile Schott. Her debut album release, she has previously released a gem of a 7" single (Babies) on Active Suspension, which brought her to the attention of The Leaf Label. An effortlessly charming album, naive instrumentals filled with warmth , melody and soul, played on a broken music box, a glockenspiel or a guitar. The recordings seem pieced together from an array of field recordings and home tapes, melodies and aroma’s slowly infused to create a homespun exercise in delicacy, beauty and a joyously moving appeal to nostalgic sensibilities and abandon. Gorgeous stuff, highly recommended.

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Colleen - Babies (Active Suspension, 2002)

A1		Babies
A2		Roulette
B1		Good Morning Sunshine

Another fine discovery by Active Suspension. Cecile Schott allows us a glimpse onto her inner world of imaginary sounds and suggested images, an intense personal universe that maps out a magnificant 3 track debut. Maniacally crafted from obsessive loops, her minimal music is one of barely peceptible subtle shifts and marginal details - instrumental sequences of recorded ritornellas played on a broken down music box, glockenspiels or guitars phasing in and out, vast desert spaces enclosed by pale grey skies threatening blackness – or a blurred dream of nostalgic emotion shifting into nightmare. Think biosphere with twisted intent, or David Lynch playing cracked pop 78s on an old victrola gramophone.

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Colleen - The Golden Morning Breaks (Leaf, 2005)

Stunning new album from Colleen, no doubt one of the records of the year. If Colleen were a painting she'd undoubtedly be a George Morland, combining a sense of the innocent and rural within a broader, more wraithlike landscape. Her second album for Leaf, 'The Golden Morning Breaks' sees Colleen (aka Cécile Schott) furthering her beguiling strain of purely instrumental, folk-speckled psychedelia. First up is the welling instrumentation of 'Summer Water', a fuzzy hearted collection of ethereal melodies structured in a style very similar to that of Russian composer Petrovich Mussorgsky. The muted mood continues on the rimy 'Floating in the Clearest Night', a song so fragile and diffused it's almost not there, whilst 'Sweet Rolling' brings to mind warm winds and falling blossom. Possibly the stand-out moment on 'The Golden Morning Breaks' is the haunted music box and backwards tape effects of 'I'll Read You a Story', where heavy harps are plucked ominously against a brooding, yet effervescent, backdrop. It's almost inevitable that comparisons will be made with 'The Golden Morning Breaks' and Mum's first album, but whereas the Icelandic quartet relied on elfin whimsy too often, Colleen is a far more textured and complex artist who will reward repeated home-listening. A massive recommendation.

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