Colleen "Libres Antes Del Final"
The compositions of Colleen, aka multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott, are as richly varied as they are precise. Each of Colleen’s albums is shaped by her predetermined distinct instrumentation and parameters, including works composed entirely of music boxes, pocket synthesizers, and baroque stringed instruments. The connective essence of Schott’s music is in her ability to create pieces within specificity that are both transcendently expansive and imbued with profound emotions. Libres antes del final is an album that reaches for the hope and desire to be truly freed from unnecessary suffering and harmful thoughts before reaching the end of one’s life cycle.
Schott composed and performed Libres on the Moog Matriarch, centering the record on a pulse-driven, bubbling energy with constant momentum, which she attributes to “being catapulted into another area of my life, centered on being physically active.” She then reamped the music in one of her favorite venues in Barcelona, Casa Montjuic, accentuating the album’s sense of movement. The reamping process adds a literal physicality to the album, as carefully chosen and placed microphones (including the famous Neumann KU100 binaural head) capture both the venue’s PA sound itself and the venue’s acoustics.
Colleen’s music ruminates on central existential questions: To what extent are we responsible for our thinking, feelings and actions? Can we ever be freed from the endlessly spinning twin wheels of our own brain and heart? Libres antes del final answers them with an exuberant release, a work of rejuvenation and revitalization, of finding light in facing the unknown.