Description
Label Review.
2017 album.
Our Overview.
Thrill Jockey. Colleen creates sublime dream-pop beauty a gorgeous and crucial push and pull of experimental urges and pop immediacy. And her fifth album ‘A Flame My Love, A Frequency’ continues to demonstrate she is fearless in her willingness to explore new sounds and new ways of creating music as a solo performer.
On her new album she introduces the most drastic change to her music since she began singing on her fourth album. A chance encounter with a Critter and Guitari synthesiser at King Britt’s Philadelphia studio on the Captain of None album tour cracked the compositional model wide open. Colleen bought a Critter and Guitari Pocket Piano with the aim to use it through a newly-acquired Moog filter pedal to create new and interesting rhythms to accompany her voice and viola da gamba. But it turned out the sounds of this viola and rhythm combination was not what she was looking for, so in typical Colleen fashion, she set the viola da gamba aside altogether and picked up an additional Critter and Guitari synth, the Septavox, dug out her her trusted Moog delay and dove right in.
Words used to describe her muse Arthur Russell are equally applicable to Colleen (multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott). Schott’s compositions can be in turn pop or experimental, vocal or instrumental, and acoustic or electronic. She has drawn on baroque sounds of a classical instrument using the most modern pedals and looping techniques. Shape shifting as she does, the pieces are always distinctly her strong and utterly unique musical voice. A constant across Colleen’s albums are delicate extended melodies, minutely detailed soundscapes, and explorative unbounded compositions. Colleen’s work is a direct result of her core belief that in order to keep growing as an artist, you need to continue to be willing to experiment and to embrace drastic changes.
Colleen has been praised by Pitchfork, Uncut, Mojo, The Wire, Magnet, FACT, Stereogum, The New York Times, Exclaim, Relix, Resident Advisor, Paste, The Quietus and more.
“Exquisite, precise music made of unlikely inputs… The result is like a heart that pumps blood and also data.” - New York Times
“It is a wondrous concoction, simultaneously ancient and modern, brought together by technology and the ear of a woman who unites epochs.” - NPR Music
“Carves out and inhabits a persuasively exotic world of echo that invites total immersion.” - Mojo