France Culture’s Atelier De Creation Radiophonique, a national radio station, commissioned Cecile Schott (Colleen) to record music for a special broadcast. Over a two year period, Schott had created a number of songs that were made entirely of music box recordings. Schott was so happy with the results that she decided to let Leaf Records release the collection as an EP (along with one extra track).
Colleen is not the first electronic musician to work with music boxes. Their whimsical draw has courted a number of other artists, most famously, Richard D. James and Bjork Gu?mundsdottir. With Colleen et Les Boites a Musique, however, the approach is different. The music box is not just a tool used in a song, but a complete exploration of an instrument’s possibilities. Colleen takes the boxes further than her contemporaries. She studies them. She manipulates them. She makes them her own.
Colleen pulls a remarkable range of sounds from the simple boxes. The echoy goodness of “What Is a Componium?, Pt1” sounds as if wind chimes were being blown in melodic patterns. The notes on “Under the Roof” seem to lock together like the strings on a harp. The tonal percussions of “Will You Gamelan for Me” and “Calypso in a Box” mimic a Trinidadian Steel Drum.
She uses the boxes to display emotion and create a sense of feeling. With its floating atmosphere, “The Sad Panther” is one of Colleen et Les Boites a Musique’s standout tracks. Recordings of soft melodies are played backwards, collapsing into another, and softy shift into a dreamy darkness. The tenderness displayed by this 2 minute track rivals other artist’s entire careers.
Colleen et Les Boites a Musique is an EP that switches its moods while keeping its sound. It moves from mournful hymns to lighthearted carols effortlessly. For example, in direct contract to the gloom of “The Sad Painter”, is the more lighthearted, “Charles’s Birthday Card.” This song is a disheveled manipulation of “Rock a Bye Baby.” The notes are slowed and awkwardly timed with forced rests that intentionally impede and a l t e r the flow. This changes a traditional classic into something different. The trick is repeated with “A Bear Is Trapped.” Here, different sections of “Pop Goes the Weasel” are sped up, slowed down, and reinterpreted. The pay-off has been taken; the weasel never pops. These songs work so well because the originals are so implanted into the collective consciousness that the alterations are clumsy, unexpected, and completely original.
Icy and delicate, gentle, and playful, Colleen et Les Boites a Musique is a remarkably deep study of the music box in contemporary songwriting.
Reviewed by: wrylab
n interviews, Cecile “Colleen” Schott has often mentioned her love of This Heat’s albums, particularly their first. This affinity draws an interesting point of comparison. Like that group, Colleen structures her music with the timbral and emotional aspects of the sound guiding the form. This Heat’s “Horizontal Hold” serves as a good example: the unusual dynamic shifts and structure of the song result from a need to maintain its immense energy, and follow from an intuitive re-approaching of established song-form. Verse-chorus patterns are subverted in favor of a lurching, stop-start structure underlined by dramatic changes in texture. The sense of musical freedom in that song, and in most of that group’s catalog, is impressive – one feels as though the music could move in any direction, veer at any unexpected angle. This freedom also guides Colleen’s best work, but under tamer circumstances. It’s not as clearly the thrill of the unexpected but the willingness and ability to follow the song, a keenness to its suggestions and implications, particularly when they point to unconventional paths.
All of this points to the unusual nature of this EP. Translated, the title reads Colleen and the Music Boxes, and this simple pairing is the foundation of the disc. With the narrow parameters of the project in mind, the results are impressive – the pieces are varied in texture and tone. But without the charm of novelty, Colleen’s creations don’t stand up as well.
It’s the inclusion of “I’ll Read You A Story,” a track from 2005's The Golden Morning Breaks, that highlights the EP’s shortcomings. Consistent with the other pieces, it’s built around the sounds of a music box; unlike the rest, it’s supplemented by a plucked classical guitar, the only conventional instrument on the EP. The rough, wooden sound of the strings serves as a wonderful compliment to the clear, piercing chime of the music box. The pairing of these two “instruments” is not intuitive, and it’s precisely this ability to hear what elements are needed to keep a piece moving forward or to fill in its gaps that distinguishes Colleen as an exceptional musician. That talent feels checked under the rigid guidelines of this project.
None of the pieces fall flat, but only a few feel fully conceived. As adept as Colleen is at coaxing rich and unexpected textures from her music boxes, those sounds alone struggle to keep afloat for the duration of a piece, and one wishes they had been allowed a guitar or cello to help them along. This isn’t to say the quality of the music isn’t high, only that the standards Colleen has already set are higher. Pleasantly ambient, the bulk of these pieces don’t invite the careful listening her past work does. The exceptions – “Your Heart Is So Loud,” “Happiness Nuggets,” “What Is A Componium? Part 1,” “The Sad Panther” – are treasures, but at 13 tracks and 38 minutes, there is probably a reason the disc comes labeled as an EP.
By Raf Spielman
by William West
Before she unveils her new album in early 2007, French composer Colleen (aka Ceclie Schott) has chosen to release this stopgap recording with an elongated name, and a shortened creative leash. Originally a commissioned work for France Culture’s Atelier De Creation Radiophonique, Colleen et les Boites a Musique is a 38-minute exploration into the sounds of the music box. In some respects, this is familiar territory for Schott, having used such devices in her previous post-ambient recordings; it is however the first time we have heard her composing with such a limited palette of sound. On her second album, The Golden Morning Breaks, she made use of an array of acoustic instruments and timbres to create her dusty ambient soundscapes. For this release, she relies almost exclusively on the mechanical melodies of these music boxes (the EPs closing track excluded), using her computer to re-sample, affect pitch and alter the delay of their notes.
On first listen, this EP doesn’t seem a million miles away from her previous recordings. It is in the same minimal vein as her earlier outings: a collection of eerie and hypnotic ambient soundscapes full of mesmerizing wonder. But Colleen has released this collection under a different name for a reason, and below the surface this is a different offering from the French composer. It’s not the atmospherics that Schott has been experimenting with; it is just a different approach to her style of writing in general. It soon becomes apparent that deconstruction is an important aspect of these compositions, as she chooses to tear apart traditional, pre-programmed melodies, fragmenting the mechanized tunes before rebuilding them as her own.
Occasionally, Schott does provide the listener with a skewed insight into the track’s origin. “Charlie’s Birthday Card” reveals itself to be a stop-start rendition of the nursery-rhyme “Rock a Bye Baby”. Likewise, “A Bear is Trapped” is an off-key, and somewhat melancholy performance of “Pop Goes the Weasel”. But for the most part, Colleen et les Boites a Musiques sees Schott mangling and stretching the melodic lines of the music boxes in order to produce her own fragile creations, through twanging individual tongs of their combs, then digitally fiddling with the resulting sound. This approach creates a relatively subtle, yet significant difference to her previous sound, the most apparent change being the actual melodic content of the tracks. There is a clearer melodic structure to these new compositions, with less emphasis placed on the layering of contrasting textures.
This all sounds terribly post-modern and gimmicky, doesn’t it? Well, maybe it is a little. But the overall result is a fairly pleasing one. As in her previous releases, Colleen shows off her ability to entrance her listeners through a variety of different ambient means. The twinkling ethereal chimings of “What Is a Componium? – Part 1” are delicate and mesmerising enough to calm a Red Bull rehab clinic, whereas the contrasting textures of “The Sad Panther”, with its sleepy, drawn-out notes, should have listeners vacantly staring into space for the duration of the track.
This release also shows off Schott’s impressive skill of using her computer wizardry to produce sounds one wouldn’t immediately associate with the music box. Refusing to be constricted by a project devoid of instrumentation, she uses her electronic sorcery to simulate different instruments, and to create a selection of contrasting textures. The shimmering washes of sound in “What Is a Componium? Part 2” evoke the sounds of a harp, and in contrast, the quirky, plinky-plonk melody of “Calypso in a Box” sounds bizarrely like a tune taken straight out of a Game-Boy. Disappointingly though, it is a previously released track that provides the EP’s most memorable moment. Originally taken from The Golden Morning Breaks, “I’ll Read You a Story” is an example of what Schott is capable of when she allows herself access to a wider range of instruments. Lush, heavily effected swooshes of music box combine with gentle acoustic guitar plucking to create a sinister and truly spellbinding work, producing a sound worthy of a place on a Tim Burton movie soundtrack.
Although atmospheric and pretty, by working within strict limitations, Schott has produced an EP that inevitably lacks the diversity of her back catalogue, and may not add to her widespread appeal. What’s more, 38 minutes is a hell of a long time to indulge in such a constricted medium. However, Colleen et les Boites a Musique is an attractive collection of ethereal tracks that should appeal to fans of Susumu Yokota’s ambient work, and Colleen’s previous material. This EP is well-constructed and nice enough, but not essential; one for the hardcore fans and raging insomniacs only.
By: Michael D. Ayers
7.0 out of 10
If you ever wondered whether your favorite album that is made solely from the sounds of music boxes would ever be trumped, you might have to reevaluate. Wait, you don't have an album that's made up purely of sounds from music boxes? In that case, Colleen's fourteen-track Et les Boites a Musique EP may jump right to the top.
Some of those tracks -- "Happy Birthday" and an appropriate "Pop Goes the Weasel" -- are simply short childhood riffs. But Colleen (born Cecile Schott) picks up where last year's stark Golden Morning Breaks left off. She's an instrumentalist, and these instrumentals are haunting throughout; they're a bit playful at times ("Happiness Nuggets"), but a feeling of tranquility pervades the EP. That sounds a bit pretentious, and so is making an album solely using music boxes, but Colleen has a gift for minimalism that is a bit more complex once you dig past the surface. She wrestles us through peacefulness, reminding of us of a time we hardly remember and eerily hinting that uncertainty lurks around the corner.
|
